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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD 
SHAKESPEARE 


BY 


JOHN  JAY  CHAPMAN 


ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  PRESS 
BOSTON 


Copyright,  1922,  by 
JOHN  JAY  CHAPMAN 


Printed  in  United  States  of  A  merica 


CONTENTS 

I.  Introduction i 

11.  The  Plays  as  Poetry 3 

III.  On  the  Stage 11 

IV.  Romeo  and  Juliet 23 

V.     Richard  III 27 

VI.    Hamlet 2>3 

VII.  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor.  ...  43 

VIII.     Othello  and  Henry  V 46 

IX.     King  Lear 55 

X.     Macbeth 68 

XL     The  Comedies 76 

XII.     Shakespeare's  Types 82 

XIII.    The  Sonnets 90 

APPENDIX 

1.    Note  on  Enunciation 108 

11.     American  Speech 114 


202S600 


A    GLANCE    TOWARD 
SHAKESPEARE 


INTRODUCTION 

The  use  of  great  men  is  to  bind  the  world  together. 
Everybody  knows  of  them,  thinks  and  writes  about 
them,  till  they  become  portions  of  the  common  mind. 
An  aftercomer  cannot  tell  his  own  story,  or  even  see 
life  clearly,  without  reference  to  those  who  have  con- 
trolled the  world's  thought  in  the  past.  And  thus  the 
names  of  great  men  become  a  part  of  the  elemental 
power  of  language  itself,  Shakespeare's  works  touch 
our  life  and  mind  at  all  points,  and  he  is  himself  be- 
hind most  of  our  critical  perceptions.  He  illumines 
our  atmosphere,  and  the  prismatic  lights  and  shadows 
that  he  casts  through  each  generation  are  moving  and 
transitory  things.  I  have,  therefore,  not  ventured  to 
call  the  papers  by  a  title  more  ambitious  than  a  glance 
toward  the  light. 

It  was  near  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  that 
men  began  to  realize  the  greatness  of  Shakespeare, 
and  literary  persons  were  then  visited  with  a  new, 
vague,  and  strange  experience  —  the  discovery  that 
the  power  of  Shakespeare  was  beyond  the  reach  of 
criticism.  The  labors  of  scholarship  over  the  poet 
have  spread  the  news,  till  it  has  become  a  common- 
place.   One  finds  in  the  classics,  whether  of  Greek  or 


INTRODUCTION 

Roman  times,  much  reverence  for  critical  theory.  At 
Athens  and  at  Rome  all  parties  had  a  religious  belief 
in  the  power  of  criticism.  This  breaking  of  shackles, 
this  plunging  of  the  mind  into  a  mystery  that  shines 
the  more  because  it  defies  analysis,  is  Shakespeare's 
gift  to  the  world. 

His  fame  as  a  poet  has  all  but  eclipsed  his  fame  as  a 
dramatist ;  because  poetry  is  a  circulating  medium 
which  floats  into  our  houses,  whereas  a  drama  implies 
a  journey  to  the  playhouse.  It  will  be  seen  that  I 
began  these  studies  by  a  paper  on  the  plays  as  poetry, 
for  it  is  as  poetry  that  Shakespeare  first  approaches 
most  of  us.  Nevertheless,  the  drama,  and  the  bones 
of  dramatic  construction,  the  management  of  plot, 
the  arts  of  speech  and  rhetoric,  are  always  at  play  in 
him.  They  are  the  wings  of  his  vehicle.  And  thus 
the  actual  stage  becomes  the  true  place  to  study  him. 
The  footlights  are  our  best  guide  to  him ;  and  if  he 
should  be  lost  to  the  living  stage,  a  great  part  of  his 
meaning  would  vanish.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the 
reader  will  find  in  these  Notes  various  discussions  of 
the  plays  as  mere  shows,  as  popular  amusements,  and 
much  scattered  talk  about  acting,  enunciation,  and 
even  about  children's  performances. 


II 


THE  PLAYS  AS  POETRY 

It  is  strange  to  think  that  the  greatest  and  most 
enduring  things  in  Hterature  have  been  written  for 
festivals  and  holiday  amusements,  or  as  the  pastimes 
of  leisure.  Of  this  nature  were  the  Greek  dramas  and 
the  earliest  epic  poems ;  of  this  nature  were  the  medi- 
aeval romances,  Moliere's  plays,  Calderon's  plays  — 
whatever  is  greatest  in  drama,  whatever  is  most  eter- 
nal in  fiction.  To  the  author  and  to  their  first  public, 
Shakespeare's  plays  were  like  street  concerts,  or 
tales  told  by  a  professional  traveler.  They  formed  a 
part  of  the  current  fiction  of  the  day,  and  were  sup- 
posed to  be  almost  as  ephemeral  as  charades. 

Yet  the  greatness  of  Shakespeare  is  bound  up  with 
this  fleeting  and  transient  purpose  of  his  plays. 
Their  unique  quality  —  the  sense  they  give  us  of 
something  that  has  never  been  touched  by  man,  but 
has  blossomed  spontaneously  out  of  the  spirit  —  is 
due,  in  part,  to  the  light  estimate  in  which  the  stage 
was  held  in  Elizabeth's  time.  This  is  what  set 
Shakespeare  free :  he  could  give  rein  to  his  imagina- 
tion, and  his  imagination  got  such  mastery  over  him 
and  burned  so  brightly,  that  it  obscured  the  fuel. 
He  had  no  court  and  no  critics  to  please,  but  only  the 
curiosity  of  an  excitable,  popular,  clamorous  audi- 
ence, for  whom  he  improvised  a  stage  that  obeyed  no 
laws  except  the  laws  of  his  own  mind  and  heart.  The 
form  and  substance  of  his  work  is  one.     We  know  of 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare  nothing  but  his  mind.  His  function  was 
to  enchant  men :  for  an  hour  or  two,  as  all  believed 
in  his  own  day,  and  for  many  centuries,  as  it  proved 
in  the  outcome.  The  charm  is  everywhere  in  him  — 
in  a  phrase,  in  a  speech,  in  a  climax,  or  in  the  mood 
that  lies  behind  them  all.  His  wit,  humor,  and  unex- 
pected leaps  and  plunges  of  thought  are  held  to- 
gether by  a  thread  of  narrative  which  is  never 
broken,  but  which  tugs  at  us  and  focuses  our  atten- 
tion on  the  action.  The  thread  of  the  story  is  often 
the  only  dramatic  unity  to  be  found  in  a  play  of 
Shakespeare. 

Whatever  playwrights  may  claim  or  scholars  pro- 
pound, the  mass  of  mankind  reads  for  recreation,  and 
it  is  as  an  engaging  writer  of  fiction  that  Shake- 
speare has  made  his  way.  The  taste  for  stories  is 
eternal.  In  the  Homeric  Age  the  tales  were  recited 
by  a  bard;  in  the  Middle  Age,  by  a  jongleur  in  a 
castle  yard.  In  Elizabeth's  day  they  were  sung  by 
ballad-mongers,  until  the  primitive  stage  caught 
them  up,  and  a  new  generation  of  poets  turned  the 
tales  of  the  world  into  dramas.  The  passion  behind 
all  this  popular  literature,  from  Homer  to  Kipling, 
is  a  passion  for  fiction.  The  form  changes  from 
poetry  to  prose  and  back  again,  the  subjects  vary 
with  the  taste  of  the  times;  but  the  inner  meaning 
and  inner  value  of  all  these  forms  of  literature  is  the 
same  at  all  epochs  —  it  is  recreation  through  fiction. 

Shakespeare  has  held  his  place  in  the  world  through 
competition  with  subsequent  fiction.  His  stories  are 
so  vividly  told,  that  even  people  who  dislike  plays 
and  who  do  not  care  for  poetry  delight  in  them.  As 
a  rule,  plays  make  hard  reading,  and  it  bothers  us  to 


THE  PLAYS  AS  POETRY 

visualize  the  characters.  But  Shakespeare's  plays 
visualize  themselves.  Each  character  is,  as  it  were, 
costumed  in  his  own  language.  Erase  the  names  of 
the  speakers,  and  the  text  itself  keeps  them  in  place. 
Destroy  stage  directions,  remove  the  stage  from  un- 
der their  feet,  and  pull  down  the  theatre,  and  yet  the 
play  goes  forward :  everything  is  expressed  in  the 
lines  themselves.  Every  shade  of  emotion  that  flits 
through  the  heart  of  a  character  is  reduced  to  a 
thought ;  and  thus  the  rapidly  moving  story  is  accom- 
panied by  a  cloud  or  nimbus  of  running  commentary, 
gay  or  gloomy,  poetic  or  worldly-wise  according  to 
circumstance,  but  always  metaphysical,  always 
Shakespeare. 

These  side-lights  and  explanations  in  Shakespeare 
are  really  the  remarks  of  the  narrator  himself,  but 
he  has  so  colored  them  to  suit  each  character  and  so 
woven  them  into  the  action,  that  they  pass  as  mere 
gestures  and  do  not  dog  the  story  too  closely.  They 
expound  it,  illuminate  it,  keep  it  alive.  When  the 
average  man  reads  one  of  the  plays  for  the  first  time, 
he  wants  to  know  what  is  going  to  happen.  When  he 
has  satisfied  this  curiosity  he  becomes  ensnared  in  the 
wit,  wisdom,  and  beauty  of  the  piece.  He  no  longer 
cares  whether  the  thing  be  a  story  or  not;  for  after 
listening  for  two  hours  to  the  most  inspired  talker  the 
world  has  ever  known,  almost  anyone  is  apt  to  come 
back  to  his  elbow.  He  returns  to  refathom  the  piece, 
for  fear  he  may  have  missed  something;  and  after 
this  he  browses  in  all  the  plays  during  his  leisure 
hours,  and  finds  pictures  of  low  life,  pictures  of  high 
life,  mad,  passionate  romance,  caustic  wit,  village 
drollery,  dungeons,  fairies,  Roman  history,  English 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

kings,  many  familiar  words  and  thoughts  whose 
origin  he  had  not  known,  fragments  of  his  own  mind 
as  it  were,  anticipations  of  his  own  experience,  things 
so  well  said  and  so  naturally  said  that  he  is  aston- 
ished. The  page  vanishes,  the  book  drops  from  his 
hand,  and  he  is  in  a  brown  study. 

Dreamy  and  emotional  people  like  the  plays  for 
their  poetry;  humdrum  people  like  them  for  their 
common  sense.  While  Shakespeare  was  one  of  the 
most  extravagant  thinkers  that  ever  lived, —  a 
moody,  brooding  romanticist, —  he  was  also  a  prac- 
tical man,  inordinately  sociable,  observant,  and  pro- 
verbial. Thus,  almost  anyone  who  has  lived  an 
active  life  and  knows  the  world  finds  a  friend  in 
Shakespeare. 

About  eighty  years  ago  there  was  a  certain  substan- 
tial merchant  of  Boston  who  retired  from  business 
with  a  competency,  and  found  himself  with  time  on 
his  hands.  A  friend  advised  him  to  read  Shake- 
speare, which  he  did,  and  was  immensely  impressed. 
"That  's  a  great  book,  sir,  an  extraordinary  book! 
Why,  sir,  there  are  not  ten  men  in  Boston  who  could 
have  written  it !" 

It  would  be  hard  to  draw  up  a  summary  of  Shake- 
speare's disciples.  The  "Tempest"  seems  to  a  child 
to  be  a  fairy  tale ;  but  to  the  German  scholar  it  is  an 
apocalypse  of  certain  Teutonic  philosophic  ideas, 
which  are  difficult  for  the  outsider  to  appreciate. 
Ought  one  to  begrudge  his  mental  pasture  to  the  Ger- 
man, or  can  we  assign  limits  to  the  meanings  of 
poetry  ?  The  plays  are  concentric,  gyrating  spheres 
of  interest.  The  wit  is  everywhere,  and  draws  in  one 
man ;  the  humor  is  everywhere,  and  draws  in  the  next. 


THE  PLAYS  AS  POETRY 

The  perfection  of  utterance  hypnotizes  a  very  large 
class,  of  which  I  confess  myself  one :  I  forget  every- 
thing in  the  language.  The  mere  contrast  of  char- 
acters is  enough  to  intoxicate  other  readers,  quite 
apart  from  what  the  creatures  do  or  say,  somewhat  as 
the  mere  coloring  of  the  great  masters  excites  certain 
beholders.  One  feels  that  these  contrasts  have  been 
imagined  in  a  region  of  thought  that  is  inaccessible  to 
the  ordinary  mind. 

Not  long  ago  I  read  "Cymbeline"  aloud  to  a  little 
girl  of  eight.  It  took  several  days,  for  I  read  every 
scene ;  and  I  was,  of  course,  obliged  to  expound  and 
digress  from  time  to  time,  in  order  to  make  the  story 
clear;  for  the  plot  is  extremely  complex  and  long 
drawn  out.  I  am  not  myself  very  fond  of  "  Cymbe- 
line." It  is  a  tissue  of  inordinate  romantic  fancy, 
like  an  enormous  tapestry,  for  which  I  have  no  room 
in  my  house.  But  to  the  little  girl  it  was  as  real  as 
Red  Riding  Hood  and  much  more  thrilling.  Ro- 
mance rushed  from  the  play  in  the  fourth  line  of  its 
opening,  and  found  Imogen  in  the  heart  of  the  child. 

Sec.  Gent.  But  what 's  the  matter? 

First  Gent.     His   daughter,    the   heir   of  's  kingdom, 
whom 
He  purposed  to  his  wife's  sole  son  —  a 

widow 
That   late   he    married  —  hath   referred 

herself 
Unto  a  poor  but  worthy  gentleman :  she  's 

wedded ; 
Her  husband  banished ;  she  imprisoned  :  all 
Is  outward  sorrow;  though  I  think  the 

King 
Be  touched  at  very  heart. 
7 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

"Cymbeline"  is  one  of  Shakespeare's  latest  plays, 
and  is  said  to  be  a  masterpiece  of  dramatic  virtuosity. 
Its  poetic  merits  belong  to  those  supersensuous, 
ecstatic,  virginal  enthusiasms  which  no  one  but 
Shakespeare  has  ever  expressed.  The  play  was  one 
of  Tennyson's  favorites ;  and  a  copy  of  it  was  found  in 
his  hands  on  his  deathbed  and  was  buried  with  him. 
Here  we  have  the  child  and  Tennyson  and  certain 
dramatic  critics  all  in  accord  over  something  which  is 
—  or  was  —  but  dimly  visible  to  me. 

I  have  read  learned  essays  upon  Shakespeare's 
habit  of  juggling  with  our  sense  of  time,  now  seeming 
to  accelerate,  now  to  retard  the  progress  of  the  plot, 
and  always  feeding  the  action  with  new  fires. 
"Othello,"  for  instance,  is  thought  to  show  traces  of 
an  elaborate  and  calculated  system  of  hints  by  which 
we  are  led  to  believe  at  one  moment  that  some  weeks 
have  elapsed,  and  at  the  next  that  only  an  hour  or 
two  has  passed,  between  one  scene  and  the  next.  I 
am  half  afraid  to  examine  such  questions,  lest  the 
charm  of  the  play  should  vanish  in  them ;  for  I  am 
convinced  that  such  things  were  woven  unconsciously 
into  the  marvelous  fabric  as  it  grew,  and  should  be 
accepted  and  consumed  by  the  reader  in  a  passing 
glance,  which  is  as  unconscious  as  was  the  feeling 
that  created  them.  Woe  be  to  the  man  who  cries 
"Stand  and  deliver"  to  Shakespeare's  fancy  or  to  life 
itself!  While  immersed  in  the  living  stream  and  vol- 
ume of  his  mind,  we  get  our  share  of  him,  and  that 
is  enough.  His  spectres  rise  in  the  fumes  of  the 
brain  and  cannot  be  conjured  to  submission.  They 
will  not  seed  or  plough  for  us.  They  are  not  exactly 
human  beings,  but  thoughts  —  phantoms  that  pass 


THE  PLAYS  AS  POETRY 

and  repass  through  the  castle  walls  of  life,  sit  on  the 
battlements  in  the  sunlight,  and  behold,  nothing  is 
there !  The  tragedies  and  the  comedies  live  in  the 
same  region,  exciting  thought,  wonder,  joy,  surprise, 
admiration,  but  never  grief.  Even  Ophelia  does  not 
excite  grief. 

Thought,  affliction,  passion,  hell  itself, 
She  turns  to  favor  and  to  prettiness. 

Nor  King  Lear,  who  turns  sufferings  to  a  pathos  that 
is  beyond  the  reach  of  tears.  Breathless  we  watch 
them,  not  sorrow-stricken,  not  saddened,  but  awed ; 
and  the  bright  troops,  motley  characters,  irrespon- 
sible humorists,  Dogberrys,  gravediggers,  jailors, 
who  flock  so  close  to  the  cortege  of  Shakespeare's 
funerals,  please,  relieve,  and  console  us  because  they 
too  are  phantoms  made  of  the  same  light  —  deflec- 
tions, pendants,  the  half-expected  completions  of  a 
dream. 

Shall  we  call  it  the  Tragic  or  the  Comic  in  Shake- 
speare that  so  moves  us  ?  One  of  Plato's  most  pro- 
found surmises,  namely,  that  the  genius  for  Tragedy 
and  the  genius  for  Comedy  were  akin,  waited  eighteen 
hundred  years  to  be  exemplified;  for  Shakespeare's 
plays  show  that  the  Tragic  and  the  Comic  are  one. 
This  remarkable  idea  may  have  occurred  to  Plato 
because  he  was  himself  a  species  of  dramatist  —  an 
entertainer  and  a.  jongleur;  and  perhaps  he  happened 
on  the  idea  as  a  trade-secret :  he  found  it  at  the  bot- 
tom of  his  pack.  Tragedy  and  Comedy  are  recrea- 
tions; but  it  was  not  till  Shakespeare  came  and  gave 
to  both  of  them  unimagined  depths  of  meaning  and 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

of  perfection  that  the  identity  of  their  genius  was 
clearly  revealed. 

One  cannot  define  pleasure,  or  name  the  difference 
between  imaginative  literature  and  realism ;  but  it  is 
easy  to  tell  them  apart.  Imaginative  work  leaves  us 
happy.  But  Ibsen  and  Tolstoy,  and  the  modern 
heavy  hewers  of  fiction,  by  whatever  name  they  may 
call  themselves,  cloy  the  mind.  Your  true  artist 
leaves  behind  an  exhilaration  and  not  a  problem. 
He  gives  us  brain-spun  realities  which  have  no  func- 
tion except  to  be  apprehended  by  the  brain.  Such 
things  on  the  stage  will  prove  to  be  either  comedy  or 
tragedy ;  and  sometimes  they  can  be  taken  as  either 
one  or  the  other,  according  to  one's  mood.  Many 
scenes  throughout  Shakespeare  are  both  comic  or 
tragic,  as  one  may  choose  to  think.  In  the  "Mer- 
chant of  Venice"  the  baffled  rage  of  Shylock  was 
staged  as  low  comedy  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years, 
till  someone  found  out  that  the  warp  and  woof  of 
tragedy  was  in  it.  In  "King  Lear"  Shakespeare 
has,  here  and  there,  mingled  the  two  elements  in  one 
dialogue,  in  one  conception,  in  one  flash.  The  scheme 
of  thought  that  runs  behind  his  work  is  deeper  than 
either  tragedy  or  comedy.  They  are  but  parts  of 
the  masque  that  is  danced  in  the  foreground.  The 
power  that  moves  them  lies  behind  and  underneath 
the  action. 


Ill 

ON  THE  STAGE 

The  plays  have  come  down  to  us,  and  have  held 
the  boards  for  three  hundred  years,  throughout  all 
the  changes  in  social  life  and  stage  usage.  Their 
plots  and  characters  live  in  the  public  mind  as  the 
Greek  myths  lived  in  the  mind  of  a  Greek  audience; 
and  half  the  playwright's  work  is  thus  done  before 
the  curtain  rises.  When  first  staged,  they  were 
hardly  divided  into  scenes ;  but  consisted  of  a  mere 
stream  of  personages,  costumed  sufficiently  to  dis- 
tinguish them  from  one  another,  mounted  on  a  primi- 
tive staging  in  a  small  theatre,  who  recited  their 
lines  at  a  rate  not  very  different  from  the  pace  of 
ordinary  conversation.  There  was  little  to  distract 
the  mind  of  the  audience  from  the  text. 

The  whole  Elizabethan  drama  shows  plainly 
enough  that  the  age  was  an  age  of  naturalism  tinc- 
tured by  a  passion  for  rant  and  bombast.  It  was  a 
furious,  riotous,  tatterdemalion  kind  of  drama,  and 
the  extreme  length  of  many  of  the  plays  proves  the 
rapidity  with  which  the  scenes  must  have  followed 
one  another.  The  Elizabethan  theatre  was  a  mill 
for  grinding  out  stories,  tales,  adventures,  historical 
incidents,  novels,  and  romances.  The  plot  and  its 
outcome  were  what  the  audience  cared  for;  not  prob- 
lems, not  tableaux,  not  spectacles.  Such  things 
occur,  to  be  sure,  but  they  seem  to  be  dragged  along 
sideways  in  the  rush  of  the  story.     The  public  was 

11 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

so  fond  of  stories  that  it  would  go  to  see  boys  act 
grown-up  plays;  not  in  the  least  because  the  audi- 
ences wished  to  encourage  the  drama  or  cared  a 
farthing  about  the  boys,  but  because  of  the  excite- 
ment of  the  plots.  No  one  to-day,  except  a  student, 
would  go  twice  to  a  veritable  Shakespeare  perform- 
ance, if  such  a  thing  were  possible.  The  chances  are 
that  we  should  find  the  old  pronunciation  hard  to 
follow,  and  the  place  would  seem  to  us  like  bedlam. 

The  plays  have  come  down  to  us  with  a  good  deal 
of  baggage  which  did  n't  belong  to  them  originally, 
but  which  we  cannot  throw  away  en  masse.  The 
right  staging  of  Shakespeare  is  a  question  of  edging 
away  from  practices,  whether  ancient  or  modern, 
which  obscure  the  effectiveness  of  the  text.  All  the 
different  devices  that  have  been  assembled  must  dis- 
solve and  disappear  in  the  performance,  showing  not 
the  stage,  but  the  drama  as  it  unrolled,  not  on  a  stage 
but  in  the  mind  of  Shakespeare,  who  has  given  the 
best  example  to  the  rest  of  the  troupe  by  disappear- 
ing himself. 

That  Shakespeare  is  overloaded  with  thought  is 
indubitable,  yet  the  very  plays  which  are  most  over- 
loaded with  thought  are  the  ones  where  the  action 
moves  most  rapidly.  The  "Tempest,"  "  King  Lear," 
"Macbeth,"  the  "Merchant  of  Venice"  hold  the 
public  to-day  by  their  pristine  appeal  as  stories. 
They  hold  it  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  all  the  improve- 
ments in  stage  management  since  Shakespeare's 
time,  whether  in  costume,  lighting,  enlargement  of 
theatre  decoration,  music,  or  drop  curtains,  tend  to 
delay  the  action  and  fix  the  attention  of  the  audience 
on  something  besides  the  story. 

12 


ON  THE  STAGE 

You  cannot  keep  Shakespeare  off  the  stage.  The 
plays  veer  toward  the  boards  as  ducks  veer  toward 
the  water  when  passing  a  pond ;  and  this  lurch  is  felt, 
not  only  in  the  whole  drift  and  action  of  a  play,  but 
in  its  scenes  and  incidents,  its  decorative  passages,  its 
dumb  show.  These  dramas  excite  the  dramatic  ambi- 
tions of  every  reader,  they  create  good  actors,  and 
they  have  maddened  the  bad  ones  in  all  ages.  Little 
scenes  cut  out  of  them  are  thrilling  if  properly  done; 
and  the  great  speeches,  soliloquies,  and  harangues  are 
the  best  monologues  in  existence.  No  actor  has  ever 
given  a  final  interpretation  of  any  one  of  the  great 
roles.  Even  when  they  are  murdered  by  bad  actors, 
they  come  to  life  again,  as  true  creatures  of  the  stage 
should  do.  The  roles  are  so  elastic  and  so  theatrical 
that  they  encourage  bad  acting.  Let  a  man  point  up 
the  speeches  and  pause  for  applause,  and  he  gets 
it. 

There  is  much  in  all  the  Elizabethan  dramas,  in- 
cluding Shakespeare's  own,  which  encourages  rant. 
Exaggeration,  whether  of  laughter  or  of  tears,  is  a 
dramatic  element.  To  tear  a  passion  to  tatters  is  a 
human  need,  and  clowns  have  always  "laughed 
themselves, in  order  to  set  on  some  quantity  of  barren 
spectators  to  laugh,  too."  It  is  partly  because 
Shakespeare  lends  himself  to  dramatic  abuses,  and  is 
himself  a  "sweet,  sweet  poison  to  the  age's  tooth," 
that  he  has  survived.  Indeed  Hamlet's  advice  to 
the  players  is  at  war  with  Shakespeare's  own  style, 
and  with  the  spirit  of  English  literature.  It  is 
Shakespeare  himself,  who,  in  a  warning  against  ex- 
cess, gives  us  one  of  the  best  examples  of  excess  in  all 
literature :  — 

18 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

Therefore,  to  be  possess'd  with  double  pomp, 

To  guard  a  title  that  was  rich  before. 

To  gild  refined  gold,  to  paint  the  lily, 

To  throw  a  perfume  on  the  violet, 

To  smooth  the  ice,  or  add  another  hue 

Unto  the  rainbow,  or  with  taper-light 

To  seek  the  beauteous  eye  of  heaven  to  garnish, 

Is  wasteful  and  ridiculous  excess. 

Hamlet's  advice  to  the  players  is  a  pretty  speech 
by  an  amateur,  "  For  in  the  torrent  and  tempest  and, 
as  I  may  say,  whirlwind  of  your  passion,  you  must 
acquire  and  beget  a  temperance  that  shall  give  it 
smoothness!"  But  the  tragedies  of  "Macbeth," 
"King  Lear,"  and  "Richard  III"  were  not  written 
by  a  man  who  was  "acquiring  and  begetting  temper- 
ance of  expression";  and  I  should  hate  to  see  them 
played  by  an  actor  who  took  Hamlet's  advice  seri- 
ously. The  tragedians  of  all  nations  have  found  that 
Shakespeare's  storms  will  stand  bellowing,  and  that 
overacting  does  not  kill  the  plays,  which  respond 
like  blooded  chargers  under  the  spur  —  nay,  they 
run  away  with  their  riders,  while  the  audience  enjoys 
the  sport. 

The  question  of  how  to  act  Shakespeare  Is  an  open 
question ;  for  no  one  has  as  yet  appeared  who  was 
powerful  enough  to  shut  it.  lago  is  excellent  as  a 
sharp-eyed  American  gambler,  or  as  a  bluff  Italian 
innkeeper.  Richard  III  will  hold  an  audience  as 
a  gladiator  with  a  talent  for  rant,  or  as  a  sickly,  em- 
bittered hunchback  of  the  malevolent  Introspective 
type.  He  could  hold  the  stage  If  he  should  play  the 
tyrant  in  one  scene  and  the  sycophant  in  the  next. 
There  Is  an  incomprehensible  power  behind  the  text 

14 


ON  THE  STAGE 

in  Shakespeare's  roles,  which  no  acting  can  wholly 
obscure.  Here  's  a  man  that  studies  Benedick  till 
he  conjures  a  modern  clubman  out  of  an  old  cavalier. 
Here  's  a  Katherine  who  is  at  heart  a  soft,  gentle 
creature,  and  dead  in  love  with  Petruchio  all  the 
while. 

I  once  saw  Hamlet  played  in  German,  by  a  Pole, 
a  Jewish  youth  five  feet  high,  desperately  excit- 
able, and  more  determinedly  out  of  his  mind  than 
is  possible  outside  of  Poland.  And  yet  unexpected 
sparks  shone  in  the  performance,  and  new  demons 
danced.  Certainly  these  plays  overstimulate  human- 
ity ;  and  inasmuch  as  they  have  driven  many  learned 
men  mad  in  all  ages,  we  ought  not  to  be  surprised 
if  they  excite  the  actors.  The  "judicious"  may 
"grieve,"  as  they  sit  in  the  best  seats  watching  some 
termagant  splitting  the  ears  of  the  groundlings;  but 
the  judicious  get  an  amusement  of  their  own  from  the 
performance;  for  grieving  is  the  chief  joy  of  the 
judicious. 

Ever  since  Charles  Lamb's  time  there  have  been 
people  who  were  so  enraptured  by  reading  Shake- 
speare to  themselves  and  so  pained  when  they  saw 
him  on  the  stage,  that  they  thought  the  plays  ought 
not  to  be  acted  at  all.  "I  mean  no  disrespect  to  any 
actor,"  says  Lamb,  "but  the  sort  of  pleasure  which 
Shakespeare's  plays  give  in  the  acting  seems  to  me 
not  at  all  to  differ  from  that  which  the  audience  re- 
ceives from  those  of  other  writers ;  and  they  being  in 
themselves  essentially  so  different  from  others,  I 
must  conclude  that  there  is  something  in_^the  nature 
of  acting  that  levels  all  distinctions." 

Lamb  develops  the  paradox  with  his  usual  spright- 

IS 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

liness.  This  class  of  Shakespeare-lovers  regard 
literary  beauty  as  the  main  end  of  drama.  They 
have  known  the  text  by  heart  since  childhood ;  the 
romances  already  inhabit  their  imagination.  When 
at  a  play  they  either  shut  their  eyes,  or  open  them 
upon  what  looks  to  them  like  a  new  and  ugly 
world. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  meanings  in  Shakespeare 
that  cannot  be  gleaned  in  the  theatre ;  for  the  drop 
scenes,  furniture,  lights,  and  music  interrupt  his 
ceaseless,  intimate,  bubbling,  flashing  exuberance. 
Nevertheless,  the  man  in  the  playhouse,  who  re- 
ceives his  impressions  through  his  eyes  and  ears,  is  the 
best  judge  of  the  story  as  drama,  because  he  sees  it  as 
drama.  There  are,  in  fact,  two  techniques  in  Shake- 
speare, —  the  literary  and  the  dramatic,  —  and  the 
expert  in  one  of  these  arts  is  apt  to  be  inexpert  in 
the  other.  Each  of  these  interwoven  arts  is  done 
with  such  mastery  that  the  devotees  of  one  hardly 
suspect  the  existence  of  the  other.  The  dramatic 
interest  is  carried  by  the  operation  of  sunken  bat- 
teries and  dynamos  of  dramatic  appeal,  whose  power 
is  lost  upon  those  who,  when  they  see  a  play,  are 
really  trying  to  re-read  the  play  in  a  theatre. 

Whether  he  was  quite  aware  of  it  or  not,  Shake- 
speare wrote  for  a  reading  public  as  well  as  for  the 
stage ;  and,  indeed,  in  his  day  the  passion  for  reading 
plays  was  as  strong  as  the  passion  for  seeing  them 
acted.  It  must  be  confessed  that  some  of  his  work 
is  so  subtle  that  it  can  be  seen  only  in  a  half-light  and 
does  not  carry  on  the  modern  stage.  For  instance,  in 
"Antony  and  Cleopatra"  a  messenger  enters.  Cleo- 
patra greets  him  with,  — 

16 


ON  THE  STAGE 

How  much  unlike  thou  art  to  Antony, 

Yet,  coming  from  him,  that  great  medicine  hath 

With  his  tinct  gilded  thee. 

For  the  fraction  of  a  second  Cleopatra  almost  sees 
Antony,  and  Shakespeare  records  the  Impression. 
This  sort  of  intimate  thought-reading  runs  through- 
out the  plays.  The  speeches  are  ripples  on  the  sur- 
face. The  characters  are  in  mesmeric  communica- 
tion with  one  another;  the  creator  has  seen  the 
drama,  byplay  and  all,  and  much  occurs  in  penum- 
bra, which  we  grasp  by  instinct  in  the  reading,  but 
which  fails  to  cross  the  footlights  in  the  theatre.  If 
a  spectator,  at  the  moment  of  Cleopatra's  exclama- 
tion, happens  to  be  wondering  where  the  devil  the 
stage  decorator  found  his  model  for  the  glaring  lotus 
capital,  and  whether  Cleopatra  really  lived  in  the 
temple  of  Karnak,  the  point  of  her  speech  will  be  lost. 

One  of  Shakespeare's  greatest  talents  is  his  power 
of  giving  what  passes  in  the  minds  of  uneducated 
persons,  of  very  old  people,  of  drunken  people.  He 
catches  the  incalculable  half-thoughts  that  glimmer 
in  confused  and  ignorant  minds.  In  his  clowns  and 
gravediggers,  his  Audreys,  Dogberrys,  and  Pistols, 
he  generally  touches  up  the  language  into  stage 
exaggeration :  the  misuse  of  words  is  dramatized. 
But  there  are  places  in  which  he  leaves  nature  naked, 
as  when  the  Hostess  describes  the  death  of  Sir  John 
Falstaff  in  "Henry  IV,  Part  2."  This  page  is  one  of 
the  greatest  that  Shakespeare  ever  penned ;  but  the 
scene  is  not  effective  on  the  stage.  Nor  is  Justice 
Shallow,  in  the  same  play,  effective  on  the  stage,  when 
he  gives  that  exhibition  of  the  faint  garrulousness  of 
extreme  old  age.    He  must  be  thought  of  as  standing 

17 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

on  the  green  before  his  country  house  in  remote 
Gloucestershire.  In  his  babble  there  sounds  a  note  of 
the  lyre  that  no  hand  but  Shakespeare's,  whether 
Christian  or  pagan,  ever  struck.  Such  scenes  are  un- 
stageable,  and,  if  you  point  them  up  in  the  produc- 
tion, they  lose  their  charm. 

Sometimes  a  reader  like  Lamb  will  get  an  incom- 
municable joy  from  a  single  word  ejaculated  by  one 
of  Shakespeare's  clowns ;  as  where  Andrew  Ague- 
cheek  cries  out  against  Malvolio,  "Fie  upon  him, 
Jezebel!"  Now,  Sir  Andrew  has  at  some  time  in 
his  early  education  heard  the  Bible  story  about 
Jezebel,  and  remembers  the  name  vaguely  as  that  of 
an  impious,  intolerable  character.  In  the  excite- 
ment of  his  shrill  and  feeble  mind,  Jezebel  comes  to 
him  as  the  strongest  word  he  can  think  of.  There 
are,  moreover,  scenes  in  Shakespeare,  and  sometimes 
long  scenes,  which  are  brilliant  as  literature  but  not 
as  drama ;  as,  for  instance,  the  Tavern  scene,  during 
which  Pistol  is  thrown  downstairs,  in  "Henry  IV, 
Part  2."  This  belongs  to  the  world  of  Fielding, 
Smollett,  and  Dickens,  and  as  fiction  it  is  greater 
than  any  of  them ;  but  it  does  not  show  in  its  best 
colors  when  staged.  Let  any  reader  turn  to  the  "  Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona"  and  read  the  speech  of 
Launce  to  his  dog,  in  Act  IV,  Scene  4.  Shakespeare 
wishes  to  amuse  the  audience  between  two  poetic 
scenes,  and  gives  us  a  little  gem,  a  masterpiece ;  but 
it  is  literature,  not  drama. 

For  a  generation  all  the  fine  arts  have  been  lan- 
guishing, and  among  them  the  poetic  drama.  We 
used  to  take  Shakespeare  for  granted,  because  there 
had  always  been  players  in    the  offing,  actors  and 

18 


ON  THE  STAGE 

companies,  who  drifted  in  and  could  recite  "Lear" 
or  "Macbeth"  as  readily  as  the  player  recites  the 
speech  about  rugged  Pyrrhus  before  the  young  Ham- 
let. So  living  was  the  tradition  of  Shakespeare,  that 
we  never  stopped  to  think  that  the  mere  delivery  of 
his  lines  was  an  art  whose  origin  was  to  be  traced  to 
the  age  when  the  plays  were  written,  and  to  a  time 
when  all  the  fine  arts  were  taught  in  workshops  and 
learned  by  apprentices  under  a  master's  eye.  So 
unbroken  has  been  the  succession  of  great  actors  and 
of  their  companies,  that  we  never  pause  to  remember 
that  we  possess  in  them  a  living  example  of  the 
mediaeval  system,  that  system  which  certain  modern 
enthusiasts  have  sought  in  vain  to  revive  in  connec- 
tion with  painting  and  the  handicrafts.  The  actor 
has  always  begun  work  as  a  member  of  a  household 
academy  which  he  entered  as  a  youth,  like  the  ap- 
prentices of  old.  When,  in  mature  life,  the  actor 
detached  himself  from  his  troupe  to  found  a  company 
of  his  own,  he  merely  floated  off  from  the  organism  of 
a  living  tradition,  and  continued  to  perfect  it  under 
forms  which  had  become  second  nature  to  him. 

The  craft  and  guild  of  acting  have  been  preserved, 
as  it  were,  by  Shakespeare's  stage  family.  The  tones 
of  the  first  actor  who  ever  played  the  Ghost  in  "Ham- 
let" still  sound  upon  our  stage,  and  the  actor  is  sup- 
posed to  have  been  Shakespeare  himself.  Every 
actor  of  prominence,  since  the  times  of  Elizabeth, 
has  received  his  schooling  in  the  whole  cycle  of  the 
Shakespearean  plays  through  this  domestic  system, 
and  by  being  steeped  in  their  atmosphere  in  early 
life. 

It  may  be  doubted  whether,  in  teaching  the  fine 

19 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

arts,  academic  influences  of  any  kind  can  replace  this 
old  system  of  apprenticeship.  The  decay  of  paint- 
ing began  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
when  exhibitions,  expert  criticism,  and  theories  of 
art  came  into  fashion.  Art  was  becoming  exotic, 
a  thing  over  which  taste  presided  and  theories  hov- 
ered. People  have  been  wondering  what  art  is,  ever 
since  they  left  off  regarding  it  as  a  trade  and  a  "mys- 
tery," a  thing  made  up  of  knacks,  habits,  and  secrets, 
communicated,  one  hardly  knew  how,  by  the  master 
to  the  apprentice,  who  watched  and  imitated  the 
master's  procedure,  helped  him  on  the  work  in  hand, 
and  imbibed  rather  than  learned  the  technical  part 
of  his  profession  —  a  part  not  separated  in  the  mind 
of  anyone  from  its  spiritual  meaning.  To  be  sure,  a 
faint  survival  of  the  old  system  may  be  seen  in  the 
modern  practice  of  painters,  who  allow  their  admirers 
to  work  in  studios  which  the  master  visits,  making 
comments  on  the  work  done  by  the  aspirants,  some- 
what as  a  swimming-master  might  stand  on  the  bank 
and  make  comments  on  the  progress  of  young  por- 
poises. But  the  old  family  life  is  gone,  the  bonds  of 
art  are  broken  between  each  two  generations,  and 
theory  takes  the  place  of  tradition. 

If  the  tradition  of  Shakespeare  be  once  lost  it  will 
have  to  be  sought  for  by  a  labor  like  that  of  digging 
in  Pompeii  to  find  frescoes :  the  meaning  and  the 
naturalness  of  the  craft  will  never  be  quite  recovered. 
I  wonder  what  a  revival  of  the  "Tempest"  or  "Mac- 
beth" would  be  like,  if  given  by  men  who  had  got  all 
their  Shakespeare  from  books.  The  plays  are  full 
of  stage  secrets  which  books  cannot  preserve,  and 
which  are  beginning  to  perish  to-day  like  sea  urchins 

20 


ON  THE  STAGE 

at  low  tide.  They  have  been  expounded  and  illumi- 
nated during  eight  generations  by  the  genius  of 
great  actors,  whose  interpretations  have  become 
almost  a  part  of  their  text.  The  very  glances  and 
byplay  of  Betterton  and  Garrick  and  Kemble  and 
Booth  ought  to  shine  all  through  a  performance  of 
"Hamlet";  and  if  these  things  be  forgotten  by  pos- 
terity, a  chapter  of  the  human  spirit  will  be  lost.  To 
the  legatees  of  the  old  school  we  must  still  go  for  our 
staging  of  Shakespeare.  We  must  graft  upon  living 
stock.  It  will  not  do  to  wait  until  the  old  fires  are 
extinct,  and  then  found  an  academy  to  revive  them. 
A  Shakespeare  revival  is  already  overdue,  and  the 
sooner  it  comes  the  more  brilliantly  will  it  blossom. 
It  should  come  before  the  heart  of  the  older  tradition 
is  cold.  The  practices  of  earlier  masters  may  seem 
to  the  great  public  to  be  worn-out  and  unnecessary 
things,  but  to  the  artists  they  represent  inspiration. 

The  staging  of  Shakespeare  is  not  a  case  for  dog- 
matism or  for  historic  correctness,  or  a  case  for  verbal 
piety.  The  plays  cannot  be  produced  textually,  and 
they  differ  so  widely  from  one  another  that  there  is  a 
special  atmosphere  in  each  of  them.  We  must  suffer 
ourselves  to  be  caught  by  the  spirit  —  and  then 
tread  lightly.  The  bareness  of  the  surroundings  in 
which  they  were  born  is  the  very  thing  that  forced  all 
their  genius  to  express  itself  in  language.  And  we 
ought,  I  suppose,  to  rely  upon  language  for  our  ef- 
fects, so  far  as  modern  fashions  will  permit.  But 
even  here  our  convictions  must  amount  to  a  mere 
tendency,  not  to  a  method. 

Shakespeare  had  many  different  styles;  he  worked 
rapidly,  experimented,  indulged  his  humors,  and  ran 

21 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

through  the  gamut  of  possible  ways  of  writing.  He 
will  pass  from  prose  to  poetry  in  the  middle  of  a 
scene,  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence,  and  the  general 
quality  of  his  work  is  improvisation.  The  commen- 
tators dislike  to  hear  this  said,  because  they  are 
men  of  leisure,  of  paste-pots  and  scissors,  and  cannot 
conceive  of  rapid  thought.  But  it  is  likely  that 
Shakespeare,  during  an  afternoon  walk,  and  before 
he  began  writing  a  play,  was  visited  by  the  angels, 
the  wraiths  and  prophetic  intimations  of  the  char- 
acters and  situations  which,  later,  in  the  good  plays 
at  least,  welled  up  under  his  pen  in  all  their  com- 
plexity and  perfection.  No  mind  can  "put  to- 
gether" such  a  play  as  "King  Lear."  The  proof  is 
that  you  cannot  take  it  apart.  You  do  not  know 
where  the  joints  are.  Shakespeare  thus  keeps  us  all 
as  fluid  as  he  was  himself;  and  whether  we  read  him 
or  act  him,  he  keeps  telling  us :  "You  can  live  in  me, 
but  you  cannot  catch  me." 


IV 

ROMEO  AND  JULIET 

Those  who  know  tell  us  that  there  is  more  money 
in  "Romeo  and  Juliet"  than  in  any  other  play  on  the 
boards.  This  does  credit  to  human  nature,  for 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet"  is  a  most  simple-hearted,  roman- 
tic love-story,  all  one  single  plan  of  action,  incident, 
and  catastrophe.  The  tale  itself  triumphs.  People 
follow  it  to-day  much  as  its  first  auditors  followed  it 
—  more  nearly  so  perhaps  than  they  can  follow  any 
other  tale  of  Shakespeare.  It  is  swifter,  hotter, 
younger  than  the  "Tempest"  or  "Cymbeline."  In 
vain  did  Mrs.  Kemble  exclaim  that  no  woman  who 
was  young  enough  to  act  Juliet  could  ever  have  ac- 
quired art  enough  to  act  her  well.  The  young  ones 
please  :  Juliet's  lines  set  their  aureole  on  the  brow  of 
youth.  The  sight  of  their  young  cheeks  and  the 
sound  of  their  young  voices  carry  the  illusion,  and  we 
accept  any  immaturities  in  the  acting  as  a  part  of  the 
character.  It  is  the  same  with  Ophelia,  if  indeed  one 
can  call  Ophelia  a  role ;  for  Ophelia  never  gets  on  the 
stage  at  all,  but  remains  in  the  mind  as  a  ballad,  a 
legend,  an  experience. 

"Romeo  and  Juliet"  is  Shakespeare's  triumph  over 
the  actors,  for  he  has  written  a  story  of  such  convinc- 
ing interest  that  the  actors  cannot  spoil  the  narrative. 
He  has  given  them  hardly  a  chance  to  show  their 
good  points,  or  work  up  "conceptions"  of  the  roles. 
Yet  he  has  given  them  just  a  hook  or  two  on  which  to 

23 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

hang  stage  characters,  and  they  almost  always  hang 
bogies  on  these  hooks,  to  the  damage  of  the  play. 
Their  main  chance  lies  in  Mercutio.  I  have  in  my 
life  seen  only  one  Mercutio  who  played  the  part  so 
rapidly  and  naturally  as  to  keep  it  in  the  background 
and  make  it  a  mere  foil  to  Romeo.  For  Mercutio  is 
not  a  character,  but  a  supplement — the  missing 
part  of  Romeo.  It  takes  both  of  them  to  make  a 
gay  gallant.  Mercutio  is  the  phantasm  that  leaps 
from  the  brain  of  Shakespeare  when  his  mind  has 
been  fatigued  and  a  little  disgusted  with  the  monoto- 
nous egotism  of  his  lovesick,  over-romantic  hero. 
This  witty,  cynical,  galvanic  Mercutio  lashes  himself 
into  obscenity  at  the  mere  sight  of  Romeo.  What  a 
relief  he  is !  But  he  must  flash  and  vanish ;  he  is 
only  a  recreation,  a  shaft  of  sunlight  on  a  passing 
cloud.  Let  him  not  try  to  stay  the  heavens  and 
drag  out  his  business.  At  the  back  of  the  stage  in  all 
these  plays,  there  is  a  demon  in  Shakespeare's  em- 
ploy working  a  machine  that  emits  soft  mysterious 
lightnings.  We  must  not  kill  his  work  with  our 
crude  antics  and  modern  apparatus.  No  one  who  is 
reading  a  play  to  himself  will  allow  the  entire  show 
to  be  held  up  while  Mercutio  stages  Queen  Mab,  or 
Jaques  produces  a  conscientious  pantomime  of  the 
Seven  Ages  of  Man,  which  turns  under  his  treatment 
into  a  lesson  in  burlesque. 

The  vignettes  in  Shakespeare  must  be  lightly 
handled.  Hamlet's  speech  to  the  players,  lago's  pic- 
ture of  the  good  woman,  Katherine's  portrait  of 
Wolsey,  and  his  other  roulades  of  wit,  must  be  flung 
ofl,  —  or  tossed  or  smiled  or  handed  or  dropped  ofi^, — 
but  never  ground  in.     It  requires  the  most  consum- 

24 


ROMEO  AND  JULIET 

mate  art  to  do  these  things  in  a  way  that  is  both 
thrilling  and  casual.  Mercutio  is  the  first  of  the 
actor's  pitfalls  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet" ;  and  the  second 
is  the  Nurse.  One  always  gets  a  little  too  much  of 
this  person.  She  is  invaluable,  of  course,  but  her 
value  should  be  economized.  The  manager  would 
do  well  to  have  a  talk  with  her  beforehand,  saying, 
"Madam,  we  cannot  stage  this  play  without  a  nurse ; 
but  if  your  idea  is  to  occupy  the  centre  of  the  stage 
and  play  at  dolls  with  your  part,  I  shall  do  with  you 
just  as  I  did  with  Polonius  yesterday  —  get  another." 
The  best  points  in  Shakespeare  are  sometimes  not 
made  by  the  actors  at  all,  but  fall  between  the  cues, 
and  are  thrilling  because  of  the  situation  which  they 
create.  The  Nurse's  lines  contain  one  such  climax, 
and  it  is  one  of  the  great  strokes  of  dramatic  genius 
in  the  play.  It  is  a  climax  tragic  in  its  import, 
natural  in  its  manner,  unforeseen  and  startling  in  its 
power.  This  is  where  the  Nurse  advises  Juliet  to 
marry  Paris,  although  she  knows  that  Juliet  has  been 
married  to  Romeo  some  three  hours  before  : — 

Nurse 

Faith  here  it  is, 
Romeo  is  banish'd  and  all  the  world  to  nothing 
That  he  dares  ne'er  come  back  to  challenge  ye 
Or  if  he  do,  it  needs  must  be  by  stealth. 
Then  since  the  case  so  stand  as  now  it  doth, 
I  think  it  best  you  married  with  the  county; 
Romeo  's  a  dishclout  to  him,  —  etc. 

Juliet  conceals  her  horror  at  the  proposition  till  the 
Nurse  has  left  the  room,  and  then  breaks  out  with 

Ancient  damnation!    O  most  wicked  fiend,  —  etc. 

25 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

The  commonplace  naturalism  of  the  base-hearted 
old  cockney  woman  is  a  thing  unlooked  for  in  tragedy. 
It  is  a  bit  of  realism  thrust  in  among  dithyrambs.  If 
you  should  work  over  the  point  and  try  to  make  much 
of  it,  you  would  spoil  it.  It  must  pass  with  the  rest. 
Shakespeare  has  here  allowed  his  whole  plot  to  hinge 
on  what  seems  to  be  the  whim  of  an  underling.  It  is 
the  Nurse's  conduct  that  determines  Juliet  to  pursue 
her  tragic  course,  and  makes  her  step  into  the  mill- 
race.  And  yet  scarcely  anything  is  said  about  the 
matter  at  the  moment  it  occurs  on  the  stage.  No 
other  dramatist  has  transitions  of  this  kind,  —  turns 
of  thought  that  are  unexpected,  fleeting,  profound, — 
so  delicate  that  they  must  be  instrumented  with  an 
aeolian  harp ;  and  yet  there  is  thunder  in  them.  The 
plot  pivots  on  them. 

One  of  these  shifts,  from  one  kind  of  dramatic 
appeal  to  another,  and  where  the  lightning  from  on 
high  falls  between  the  characters  on  the  stage,  occurs 
in  Hamlet's  interview  with  his  mother,  where,  in  the 
midst  of  the  towering  passion  of  both  Hamlet  and  his 
mother,  Hamlet  sees  the  Ghost.  The  Queen  for  a 
moment  really  believes  Hamlet  to  be  mad :  she  for- 
gets her  moral  agonies  and  becomes  plainly  a  fright- 
ened woman.  All  she  has  to  say  is,  "Alas,  he's 
mad!"  This  naturalism,  which  comes  crashing 
down  from  the  tragic  roof  in  Shakespeare,  is  what 
makes  his  writing  different  from  any  other  writing  on 
earth.  If  you  surround  his  dramas  with  pomp,  as  if 
they  were  the  work  of  /Eschylus  or  Corneille,  you  will 
lose  him.  The  barn  floor  must  be  under  the  feet  of 
the  actor.  Nothing  else  is  humble  enough,  home- 
bred, earthy,  and  inward  enough,  to  show  the  fall  of 
his  fires. 


RICHARD  III 

This  play  is  a  rattling  melodrama  —  perhaps  the 
first  good  melodrama  written  in  England,  for  its 
immediate  popularity  was  immense  and  five  editions 
appeared  during  Shakespeare's  lifetime.  It  is  boister- 
ous and  stagy,  —  almost  an  extravaganza,  —  and 
would  be  intolerable  but  for  the  wonderful  godlike 
humor  that  pervades  it.  There  is,  to  my  mind,  no 
note  of  tragedy  in  it ;  for  the  tragic  themes  have  been 
handled  wholesale,  and  as  if  by  a  giant  at  play.  The 
characters  seem  to  clamor  for  the  boards.  If  you 
delay  them,  and  insist  on  understanding  the  Dram- 
atis Personae,  seeking  to  identify  each  of  them  his- 
torically, you  will  waste  your  time.  The  British 
Royal  Family  in  Richard's  time  was  so  multitudi- 
nous and  complicated  that  even  Shakespeare  him- 
self makes  mistakes  in  it ;  and  this  though  he  had 
spent  several  years  over  the  chronicles  while  writing 
his  historical  plays.  But  as  soon  as  the  feet  of  the 
actors  touch  the  boards,  the  characters  in  "Richard 
III "  identify  themselves  very  readily.  Their  names 
are  announced  as  they  enter.  "  But  who  comes  here  ? 
The  new-delivered  Hastings."  "Here  come  the  lords 
of  Buckingham  and  Derby,"  etc. 

In  the  opening  scenes  it  is  dinned  into  the  audi- 
ence that  Henry  VI  and  his  son  have  been  murdered 
by  Richard  before  the  play  opens;  and  the  other 
people  to  be  murdered  pass  toward  their  execution  so 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

rapidly  after  their  first  appearance,  that  we  never 
confuse  them.  Most  of  the  victims  are  allowed  time 
to  stop  and  point  out  that  the  curse  has  come  upon 
them,  which  curse  has  been  provided  very  unmis- 
takably in  a  long  scene  near  the  beginning  of  the 
play.  This  curse  helps  hold  the  play  together,  and 
it  is,  as  any  child  can  see,  the  curse  of  the  old  Queen 
Margaret,  whom  the  rest  of  the  company  have  sup- 
planted. But  if  by  chance  you  fall  into  any  doubt 
about  the  identity  of  the  murdered  people,  your  mind 
will  be  set  at  rest  by  a  recapitulation.  On  the  night 
before  the  battle  the  eleven  ghosts  rise  in  the  order 
of  their  taking-off,  and  each  pronounces  a  malediction 
on  Richard,  who  is  asleep  on  one  side  of  the  stage,  and 
a  blessing  on  Richmond  (who,  by  the  way,  was 
Queen  Elizabeth's  grandfather),  who  is  asleep  on  the 
other  side  of  the  stage.  So  well  did  Shakespeare 
understand  the  art  of  clear  dramatic  presentation. 

Most  of  the  scenes  in  this  play  are  conceived  in  the 
same  spirit  of  outrageous  dramatic  clarity  that  is 
seen  in  Richard's  opening  of  "Now  is  the  winter  of 
our  discontent,"  etc.  Richard  is  "determined  to 
prove  a  villain."  Many  separate  scenes  are  little 
dramatic  unities  in  themselves,  full  of  points,  full  of 
stage  business.  The  style  of  the  play  is  so  easily 
imitated  that  Colley  Gibber  doctored  it  to  the  extent 
of  two  thousand  lines,  and  his  version  held  the  stage 
for  one  hundred  and  twenty  years.  Two  of  Gibber's 
improvements, — "Off  with  his  head,  So  much  for 
Buckingham!"  and  "Richard's  himself  again!" 
have  passed  into  the  language  as  a  part  of  Shake- 
speare. The  style  of  the  play  is,  indeed,  that  of  the 
babes  in  the  wood;  and  some  learned   critics  have 

28 


RICHARD  III 

supposed  that  the  ballad  lies  at  the  foundation  of  the 
play.  I  think  so  myself.  That  is  why  "Richard 
III"  is  popular,  that  is  how  it  is  good.  That  is  why 
schoolboys  spout  it,  and  great  actors  chafe  and  fume 
till  they  can  show  themselves  off  in  it.  The  play 
gives  everyone  a  chance.  Clarence's  dream  is  surely 
enough  to  satisfy  any  reasonable  actor  for  a  season. 
Buckingham  and  Hastings  have  telling  roles  and 
dying  speeches.  There  are  four  women's  parts,  every 
one  of  them  towering  with  stage  possibilities. 

Let  us  not  forget  those  very  endearing  murderers  of 
Clarence.  These  gentle  cockneys  belong  to  the 
grave-digging  peasantry,  the  argumentative  yokels, 
and  alehouse  loafers  of  Shakespeare's  comedy.  In 
"Hamlet"  such  figures  are  used  as  mere  decoration, 
but  in  "Richard  III"  they  must  be  melodramatic, 
like  everything  in  the  play.  The  murder  is  well 
managed.  There  Is  a  soft  villlan  and  a  hard  villain ; 
we  are  kept  in  doubt  as  to  the  outcome,  and  the  blow 
is  struck  unexpectedly  with  a  "Look  behind  you!" 
in  the  true,  time-honored  manner. 

In  writing  "Richard  III"  Shakespeare  did  not 
deny  himself  any  stage  effects  that  he  could  think  of. 
The  murder  of  Clarence,  the  funeral  procession  of  a 
king,  a  throne-room  scene,  the  cursing  of  Richard  by 
his  mother,  two  bad  dreams,  two  orations  (one  to 
each  army  by  its  commander),  a  desperate  battle 
scene  with  Richard  shouting  for  his  horse,  and  the 
final  entry  of  Richmond  bearing  the  crown,  and 
making  the  very  gratifying  announcement,  "The 
bloody  dog  is  dead!"  Of  course  there  are  messen- 
gers. When  the  murders  begin  to  run  short,  at  the 
close  of  the  fourth  act,  five  messengers  come  in  one 

29 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

after  the  other  to  announce  the  coming  battle.  This 
shows  Shakespeare's  mood,  —  his  conception  of  the 
play, — and  we  may  take  these  messengers  as  a  hint 
of  the  spirit  in  which  the  play  as  a  whole  should  be 
given. 

Anaemic  persons  may  mutter  that  two  murders  are 
not  so  terrible  as  one,  and  eleven  ghosts  not  so  terri- 
fying as  one,  and  that  many  curses  are  not  so  impres- 
sive as  one  —  for  it  appears  that  the  terrible  Queen 
Margaret  is  herself  under  a  curse ;  and  this,  with  her 
own  curses  and  the  curse  of  Richard  by  his  mother, 
makes  a  perfect  cloud  of  curses  that  are  in  the  air. 
But  Shakespeare  did  not  regard  such  things  as  over- 
stepping the  modesty  of  nature.  He  enjoyed  quan- 
tity,—  in  ghosts  as  in  other  things,  —  when  the  mood 
was  on  him ;  and  this  play,  with  its  universal  popu- 
larity, is  the  best  answer  ever  given  to  a  kind  of 
parlor  art-criticism,  which  is  as  old  as  Aristotle  and 
of  which  Hamlet's  advice  to  the  players  is  a  sample. 
It  is  clear  that  "Richard  III"  is  a  sort  of  green- 
roomful  of  properties.  The  actors  and  managers  do 
well  to  use  such  of  them  as  they  can,  cutting  them  to 
fit  the  occasion ;  for  some  of  them  are  impossible  on 
the  modern  stage,  and  must  always  have  been  feeble, 
as,  for  instance,  the  scenes  of  antiphonal  wailing, 
where  the  characters  repeat  the  same  phrases  after 
each  other  in  an  operatic  manner. 

The  character  of  Richard  has  caused  the  literary 
people  many  wakeful  nights.  No  one  has  ever  seen 
a  man  like  Richard  III ;  and  yet  he  is  nearly  perfect 
as  a  stage  villain.  He  is  glowing  with  wit  and  humor, 
and  in  his  seven  soliloquies  he  expounds  himself  like 
a    prologue.     One    thing    however    is    clear :    Had 

80 


RICHARD  III 

Richard  been  gloomy,  the  play  would  have  become 
a  bore.  We  should  have  cried,  "Oh,  here  he  comes 
again,  that  dreary  criminal!"  I  doubt  whether 
Shakespeare  troubled  himself  much  about  the  ques- 
tion. Do  such  persons  exist  ?  or  built  up  his  char- 
acters out  of  observation.  He  evolved  them  rather 
through  stage  experience. 

Jeremiah  Mason,  the  great  jury  lawyer,  was  asked 
by  a  friend  at  the  close  of  a  murder  trial,  in  which  he 
had  given  proofs  of  phenomenal  power  in  defending 
a  criminal,  "What  are  your  personal  beliefs  as  to  the 
man's  guilt?"  "Why,"  said  Mason,  "I  have  never 
given  a  thought  to  the  matter."  We  ought  to  re- 
member this  story  in  criticizing  any  character  in  a 
drama.  The  stage,  like  the  law,  has  its  fictions,  its 
presumptions ;  it  has  an  appeal  and  a  forensic  of  its 
own ;  and  though  human  nature  as  it  exists  has,  no 
doubt,  been  translated  into  this  language  by  the 
playwright  and  for  stage  purposes,  you  can  never  go 
to  the  stage  language  and  translate  it  back  again  into 
life. 

Richard  Ill's  courtship  of  Anne  goes  well  on  the 
stage;  it  has  interested  the  onlookers  for  several 
hundred  years,  and  there  must  therefore  be  some 
kind  of  symbolic  truth  in  the  scene ;  but  to  compare 
it  to  a  scene  in  real  life,  or  to  compare  any  character 
in  Shakespeare  to  any  real  character,  is  absurd. 
One  might  as  reasonably  take  a  stage  helmet  or  stage 
cup  of  poison  and  try  to  relate  it  to  real  life.  All  our 
painstaking  discussions  of  Shakespeare's  people  as 
human  characters  must  go  by  the  board.  The  plays 
should  be  acted  largely,  as  they  were  written.  I 
think  that  even  Salvini  and  Irving  would  have  done 

81 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

better  if  they  had  been  less  conscientious  and  inten- 
tional. Richard  should  be  played  genially  and  with 
gusto,  and  without  so  much  regard  to  a  supposed 
inner  logic  of  character  as  to  the  blatant  outer  logic 
of  stage  effects.  For  instance :  the  terror  and  re- 
pentance of  Richard  during  his  bad  night  before  the 
battle  were  laid  on  with  a  trowel  by  Shakespeare  for 
the  sake  of  the  gallery.  The  speech  is  crude  in 
detail,  for  Richard  suddenly  discovers  that  nobody 
loves  hini^  and  says,  "Is  there  a  murderer  here  ?  No. 
Yes.  I  am.  Then  fly!"  etc.  But  the  speech  is 
right  in  the  large.  The  bad  man  of  a  play  ought  to 
call  for  drink  before  a  battle,  and  be  tortured  by 
remorse  in  his  dreams;  the  good  man  ought  to  say 
his  prayers  and  be  visited  by  angels.  If  it  were  n't 
for  such  touches  as  this,  and  the  stage  experience 
behind  them,  "Richard  III"  would  never  have  held 
the  boards  since  1593. 


VI 

HAMLET 

The  so-called  laws  of  dramatic  writing,  which 
have  been  discussed  and  expounded  ever  since  the 
time  of  Aristotle,  were  not  discovered  by  men  who 
spent  their  evenings  at  a  variety  show.  These  laws 
were  first  given  out  by  scholars,  who  found  them- 
selves very  comfortable  with  someone  else's  manu- 
script spread  before  them  and  a  good  light  flowing 
over  their  shoulder,  but  who  would  have  been  ex- 
tremely uncomfortable  if  they  had  been  obliged  to 
put  together  a  play  that  should  entertain  a  mixed 
audience  for  a  couple  of  hours.  I  scarcely  know  what 
it  is  that  puts  the  critic  above  the  author,  and  pro- 
vides him  with  his  historic  and  invulnerable  com- 
placency; but  I  think  it  is  due  to  leisure  and  the 
cheapness  of  writing  materials. 

The  admirable  notice  on  Shakespeare  in  the  En- 
cyclopaedia Britannica  is  marred  by  a  few  conde- 
scending sentences  of  aesthetic  criticism,  of  which  I 
give  the  most  imposing.  After  pointing  out  some  of 
Shakespeare's  deficiencies,  the  critic  continues  :  — 

This  want  of  finish,  this  imperfect  fusing  of  the  literary 
ore,  is  essentially  characteristic  of  the  Renaissance,  as  com- 
pared with  ages  in  which  the  creative  impulse  is  weaker,  and 
leaves  room  for  a  finer  concentration  of  the  means  upon  the 
end.  There  is  nearly  always  unity  of  purpose  in  a  Shake- 
spearean play,  but  it  often  requires  an  intellectual  effort  to 
grasp  it,  and  does  not  result  in  a  unity  of  effect.    The  issues 

33 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

are  obscured  by  a  careless  generosity,  which  would  extend 
to  art  the  boundless  freedom  of  life  itself.  Hence  the  in- 
trusive and  jarring  elements  which  stand  in  such  curious 
incongruity  with  the  utmost  reaches  of  which  the  dramatic 
spirit  is  capable;  the  conventional  and  melodramatic  end- 
ings, the  inconsistencies  of  action  and  even  of  character, 
the  emotional  confusions  of  tragi-comedy,  the  complications 
of  plot  and  subplot,  the  marring  of  the  give-and-take  of 
dialogue  by  superfluities  of  description  and  of  argument, 
the  jest  and  bombast  lightly  thrown  in  to  suit  the  taste  of 
the  groundlings,  all  the  flecks  that  to  an  instructed  modern 
criticism  are  only  too  apparent  upon  the  Shakespearean 
sun.  It  perhaps  follows  from  this  that  the  most  fruitful 
way  of  approaching  Shakespeare  is  by  an  analysis  of  his 
work  rather  as  a  process  than  as  a  completed  whole. 

"An  instructed  modern  criticism"!  But  the 
devil  of  it  is  to  discover  just  what  these  "too  appar- 
ent flecks"  are,  and  then  to  whisk  them  deftly  into 
the  waste-paper  basket,  leaving  the  "literary  fin- 
ish," which  the  critic  understands  so  well.  Moli^re, 
who  was  one  of  the  most  sensible  of  men,  and  who 
lived  in  an  age  of  pseudo-classicism  which  frostbit 
all  the  genius  of  France  except  his  own,  took  the 
instructed  modern  criticism  of  his  times  quite  cheer- 
fully.    He  says :  — 

Je  me  fierois  assez  a  I'approbation  du  parterre,  par  la 
raison  qu'entre  ceux  qui  le  composent  il  y  en  a  plusieurs  qui 
sont  capable  de  juger  d'une  piece  selon  les  regies,  et  que 
les  autres  en  jugent  par  la  bonne  fagon  d'en  juger,  qui  est 
de  se  laisser  prendre  aux  choses,  et  de  n'avoir  ni  prevention 
aveugle,  ni  complaisance  affectee,  ni  delicatesse  ridicule. 

There  is  in  reality  only  one  dramatic  law.  We 
can  see  that  it  must  exist,  yet  no  one  has  ever  been 


HAMLET 

able  to  formulate  it.  The  gist  of  it  is  as  follows : 
Something  must  happen  on  the  stage  that  interests 
the  audience;  otherwise,  they  will  go  away. 

As  for  the  old,  sacred  apparatus  of  criticism,  of 
which  Shakespeare  knew  nothing,  we  need  make  no 
long  delay  over  its  theories.  One  or  two  of  his 
tragedies  can,  with  a  little  stretching  of  the  tent- 
pins,  be  dragged  in  under  the  roof  of  classic  and 
pseudo-classic  criticism.  For  instance,  we  can  say 
of  "King  Lear"  that  the  theme  is  Greek;  for,  as 
everyone  knows,  the  regular  theme  of  Greek  tragedy 
was  the  punishment  of  self-will,  of  insolence  and 
impiety.  Now  the  play  of  "King  Lear"  deals  with 
this  same  idea  —  self-will  —  seen  from  the  oppo- 
site side.  The  play  represents  the  triumph  of 
humility,  and  Lear  is  a  reformed  tyrant.  We  can 
say  of  "King  Lear"  that  it  is  a  single,  grand  sym- 
phonic poem :  the  attention  of  everyone  is  held  to 
one  single  idea  during  the  entire  evening.  The 
author  takes  the  audience  into  his  confidence;  the 
climaxes  are  foreseen  and  led  up  to. 

In  observing  these  matters,  we  lull  ourselves  into  a 
belief  that  something  is  known  about  the  laws  of  the 
drama.  If,  however,  we  turn  to  "Hamlet,"  we  find 
that  Shakespeare  has  produced  effects  as  remarkable 
as  those  of  "King  Lear"  by  the  use  of  a  technique 
that  seems  to  be  entirely  different.  Shakespeare  in- 
deed improvises  his  technique.  It  is  never  twice 
alike,  and  he  is  as  great  when  he  appears  to  be  vio- 
lating all  the  supposed  rules  of  dramatic  writing  as  he 
is  when  he  seems  to  be  following  at  least  some  of 
them. 

"Hamlet"  is  the  most  famous  play  in  the  world. 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

It  excites  the  learned  as  much  as  it  delights  the  vul- 
gar. It  is  the  most  stageable  invention  ever  put 
together  by  the  wit  of  man ;  and  yet  nobody  quite 
knows  what  the  theme  of  it  is,  or  what  the  moral  is 
—  if  it  has  a  moral.  The  execution  of  the  work  is  so 
brilliant  that  it  dazzles  us,  and  we  cannot  see  just 
how  much  is  structure  and  how  much  ornament. 
The  world  has  been  searching  for  two  hundred  years 
for  a  bit  of  smoked  glass  through  which  to  look  at 
"Hamlet."  Its  popularity  on  the  stage  is  easy  to 
understand :  it  is  the  richest  variety  show  in  exist- 
ence. You  have  a  murder  and  a  ghost  to  begin  with, 
and  in  the  course  of  the  play  you  have  seven  more 
murders  and  a  suicide.  You  have  Ophelia,  Polonius, 
a  play  within  a  play,  an  insurrection,  the  grave- 
diggers,  a  funeral,  a  hand-to-hand  fight  in  a  grave, 
a  pretended  fencing-bout  which  is  really  a  duel,  and, 
finally,  the  grand  collapse  of  the  whole  kingdom,  the 
extinction  of  its  royal  family,  and  the  martial  en- 
trance of  a  conqueror  who  views  a  stage  on  which 
dead  bodies  are  piled. 

Certainly  if  such  a  feast  of  excitement  does  not 
satisfy  the  theatre-goer,  nothing  will;  for  these 
scenes  drift  by  him  as  in  a  dream,  and  are  each  so 
interesting  and  startling,  so  witty  and  amusing  in 
themselves,  so  full  of  tears  and  heart-break,  that  the 
onlooker  never  discovers  that  the  play  has  no  action 
in  the  dramatic  sense  of  the  word.  Nothing  has  hap- 
pened in  the  Story-of-Hamlet's-Revenge  between  the 
first  act,  where  the  theme  is  so  gorgeously  announced, 
and  the  very  end  when  the  King  is  killed. 

What  is  it,  then,  that  holds  all  these  thrilling 
scenes  together,  and  makes  people  watch  and  gape 

36 


HAMLET 

and  wonder  what  is  coming  next,  and  go  night  after 
night  to  see  a  story  which  is  merely  the  dramatiza- 
tion of  a  mental  paralysis,  a  series  of  actions  that 
depict  inaction  ?  If  Shakespeare  had  shown  his 
scenario  and  explained  his  plan  to  any  competent 
and  instructed  playwright,  the  scholar  would  have 
said :  — 

"  But  my  dear  fellow,  this  will  never  do.  You  be- 
gin the  play  as  if  it  were  a  ghost-fate-drama,  and 
then  your  ghost  and  his  story  are  completely  for- 
gotten. The  actor  who  plays  the  ghost  goes  home 
at  the  end  of  the  third  act.  That  ghost  ought  to 
appear  in  the  climax  at  the  end.  But  it  seems  that 
you  have  just  used  the  ghost  to  help  get  your  play 
under  way.  That 's  not  a  proper  way  to  treat  a 
ghost.  Then  you  kill  off  your  heroine  in  the  middle  : 
your  heroine,  like  your  ghost,  is  a  mere  makeweight. 
Then,  you  must  know,  that  the  first  rule  is  that  a 
playwright  should  never  equivocate :  he  must  ex- 
plain each  step.  But  with  you  everything  is  equiv- 
ocation. Is  Hamlet  really  mad  ?  Does  Ophelia 
drown  herself  out  of  grief  for  her  father  or  out  of  love 
for  Hamlet  ?  Did  the  Queen  know  that  her  first 
husband  was  murdered  ?  Moreover,  you  should 
never  surprise  an  audience.  In  this  play  you  jounce 
your  audience  from  one  surprise  to  another.  The 
first  is  when  Hamlet  changes  his  mind  after  seeing 
the  ghost,  and  suddenly  determines  not  to  tell 
Horatio  about  it;  this  amazes  the  pit.  The  audi- 
ence is  surprised  again  when  he  changes  his  mind 
the  next  morning  and  confides  in  Horatio.  It  is 
surprised  by  the  murder  of  Polonius,  by  the  banish- 
ment of  Hamlet,  by  his  return,  by  every  incident  in 

37 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

the  play.  Nothing  is  prepared  for.  Then  again, 
why  kill  off  that  amusing  Polonius  ?  Then  again, 
you  make  your  hero  commit  three  cold-blooded  mur- 
ders. Why  did  you  do  that  ?  It  destroys  all  sym- 
pathy for  him.  The  play  is  an  amateur  play,  my 
boy." 

What  is  the  single  thought  that  lies  behind  the 
drama  of  "Hamlet"  ?  Let  us  listen  to  the  gossip  of 
the  audience  at  the  close  of  the  play,  and  while  the 
people  are  walking  home  to  supper.  "Hamlet"  ex- 
cites the  same  emotion  in  all  minds.  Goethe  and 
Coleridge  and  Victor  Hugo  are  talking  about  the 
same  question  that  agitates  the  peanut  gallery : 
Why  could  n't  the  young  man  avenge  his  father's 
murder  ?  Surely  the  brain  and  consciousness  of 
these  listeners  must  have  been  undergoing  stroke 
after  stroke  from  some  divine  apparatus,  the  blows 
must  have  been  falling  in  the  same  place  on  some 
harmonic  anvil,  or  this  tremendous  unitary  effect 
on  the  audience  could  not  have  been  produced. 

Is  the  continuity  of  inaction  such  an  idea  as  can 
hold  an  audience  spellbound,  when  exhibited  in 
various  vivid  scenes  of  melodrama,  each  of  which 
calls  for  some  action  that  does  not  come  ?  "To  be 
or  not  to  be,"  which  the  world  has  seized  on  as  the 
key  to  the  play,  would  lead  one  to  think  so.  The 
unity  in  "Hamlet"  consists  in  the  succession  of  epi- 
sodes in  which  Hamlet  always  disappoints  expecta- 
tion. The  man  cannot  act,  but  only  feel,  reflect, 
and  plan.  He  is,  however,  constantly  exciting  us 
into  a  belief  that  he  is  about  to  do  something;  but 
the  action  he  takes  is  never  a  deed ;  it  is  a  mere  ges- 
ture.   His  actions  consist   in  (i)  the  ruse  to  catch 

88 


HAMLET 

the  conscience  of  a  king ;  (2)  the  murder  of  Polonius 
at  a  moment  when  he  cannot  see  Polonius;  (3)  the 
forging  of  a  document  that  is  to  cost  his  schoolmates 
their  lives ;  and  (4)  the  murder  of  the  King,  to  which 
he  seems  spurred  at  the  last  moment  by  personal 
vengeance  and  at  a  moment  when  he  knows  he  is 
dying  of  the  King's  poison.  These  deeds  are  not 
deeds,  but  spasms. 

The  miracle  in  the  play  is  the  fact  that  we  see  the 
same  spectre  behind  and  through  each  climax  of  the 
melodrama.  We  do  not  know  quite  what  that  figure 
is,  yet  it  is  terrific.  The  same  spectre  is  flashed  into 
our  minds  through  a  succession  of  different  poetic 
mists :  we  feel  its  identity,  yet  we  cannot  name  the 
wraith.  The  variety  in  the  drama  is  due  to  the  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  poetic  atmosphere  with  which 
Shakespeare  has  clothed  his  spectre  under  different 
circumstances.  Perhaps  it  is  the  isolation  of  Ham- 
let's mind  that  is  being  exhibited  in  each  case  —  an 
isolation  somehow  connected  with  his  incapacity  for 
action. 

Let  us  consider  the  different  kinds  of  poetic  mys- 
tery in  which  Hamlet's  spirit  is  enveloped  in  the 
several  scenes  of  the  play.  You  have,  in  the  first 
place,  the  two  great  tragic  scenes :  the  opening  scene 
with  the  Ghost,  and  Hamlet's  interview  with  his 
mother  at  the  end  of  the  third  act.  Both  of  these 
scenes  are  drenched  in  precisely  the  same  kind  of 
poetry.  They  have  an  atmosphere  of  their  own, 
which  appears  nowhere  else  in  the  play.  You  have, 
next,  Hamlet's  wit  and  banter,  the  badinage  with 
which  he  meets  all  the  minor  personages  of  the 
piece.     This  is  sometimes  sharp,  often  good-natured. 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

always  inward  and  remote.  It  resembles  the  talk 
of  a  man  who  is  talking  to  himself.  His  words  are 
non-responsive  to  his  interlocutor,  but  interesting  to 
us  because  we  know  what  the  subject  of  his  thought 
really  is.  This  banter  emphasizes  the  chasm  of 
contemplation  in  which  Hamlet  is  sunk.  He  is 
alone,  and  his  solitude  is  dramatized  by  every  word 
he  speaks.  You  have,  next,  those  great  soliloquies, 
in  which  the  spiritual  isolation  of  the  man  is  articu- 
lated with  such  accuracy  of  analysis  and  such  elo- 
quence that  they  have  become  Biblical.  They  take 
rank  with  the  Psalms  in  the  popular  life  of  the  world 
as  the  cry  of  a  solitary  spirit.  These  soliloquies  are 
so  wonderful  that  we  hardly  notice  that  they  are 
replicas  of  one  another.  Let  anyone  read  the  solil- 
oquy (Act  IV,  Scene  4)  on  a  plain  in  Denmark,  and 
find  an  idea  which  has  not  been  more  hotly  and  con- 
vincingly expressed  in  "O  what  a  rogue  and  peasant 
slave  am  I!"  This  scene  on  the  plain  has  been 
planned  as  a  setting  for  this  soliloquy.  It  has  no 
other  function.  It  is  not  wholly  successful,  because 
the  soliloquy  is  too  purely  a  repetition. 

You  have,  next,  the  scenes  showing  Hamlet's  rela- 
tions with  Ophelia,  which  are  certainly  the  most  mov- 
ing scenes  in  the  play.  They  have  an  appeal  in  them, 
and  a  kind  of  poetry  which  is  entirely  their  own. 
Hamlet  is  isolated  even  from  Ophelia.  Some  people 
think  that  this  is  due  to  the  shock  he  received  by  the 
Ghost's  revelations.  But  the  cause  is  deeper;  that 
shock  only  revealed  his  native  and  almost  accursed 
isolation.  He  seems  to  think  he  might  have  loved 
Ophelia.  When,  later,  he  jumps  into  the  grave,  he 
says  he  had  loved  her;  but  he  never  mentions  her 

40 


HAMLET 

thereafter.  Then  again,  in  the  interviews  with 
Horatio,  Hamlet  shows  a  deep  and  somewhat  femi- 
nine pathos  about  himself;  a  distinct,  new  poetic 
note  is  sounded  in  these  scenes  and  nowhere  else. 
In  spite  of  Hamlet's  tremendous  emotionalism  about 
his  parents,  and  in  spite  of  his  love  for  Horatio,  there 
is  a  certain  lack  of  heart  in  him.  He  is  pathetic  and 
a  little  monstrous.  We  pity,  but  can  hardly  love 
the  isolated  man. 

Whatever  may  be  the  reason,  the  play  of  "Ham- 
let" makes  a  different  and  more  personal  appeal  than 
any  other  play.  Everyone  fancies  himself  a  Ham- 
let. There  is,  indeed,  some  shadow  of  Hamlet  in 
everyone;  and  this  is  the  shadow  that  Shakespeare 
has  been  casting  upon  the  cloudy  air.  He  has  seen 
it  among  the  elemental  forces  in  his  own  mind  —  it 
is  the  Contemplator. 

Consider  what  happens  daily  to  us  all.  Between 
contemplation  and  action  there  comes  normally  a 
change  of  mood;  a  lever  is  pulled,  a  new  gear  is 
brought  into  play.  With  Hamlet  the  lever  is  pulled 
and  nothing  happens :  a  lobe  of  his  brain  is  missing. 
When  he  is  knocked  down  by  a  fact,  he  is  like  a  horse 
that  cannot  get  up  again.  After  his  interview  with 
the  Ghost  he  knows  only  one  thing.  He  will  do 
nothing.  He  will  not  reveal  anything;  he  must 
wait.  And  so  on :  every  time  that  Hamlet  shies  at 
a  resolution  or  baulks  at  a  conclusion,  the  drama  is 
intensified. 

Had  Hamlet  been  represented  as  a  bad  man  or  a 
cynic,  no  one  would  have  been  mystified  by  him. 
Everyone  would  have  said,  "His  incapacity  is  the 
punishment  of  sin."     But  Hamlet   is   good.     The 

41 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

play  does  not  concern  the  hiatus  between  Good  and 
Evil,  but  between  Mind  and  Will.     The  problem  is 
subtle,  yet  the  elements  are  as  universal  as  the  devil 
himself.     Hence  the  wide  appeal  made  by  the  play. 
The  theme  of  "Hamlet"  is  grief—  for  all  of  Ham- 
let's  feelings   turn   to  grief:    his   love   is  grief;  his 
friendship  is  grief;  his  humor  is  grief.     It  is  a  pe- 
culiar, withering  sort  of  grief — perhaps    unmanly 
grief;  at  any  rate,  the  kind  of  grief  that  closes  the 
petals  of  the  heart  and  holds  them  shut  till  the  soul 
is  dead.     In  the  last  two  scenes  of  the  drama,  Ham- 
let has  lost  his  charm.     He  is  washed  out,  spiritless, 
uninteresting.     Does    Shakespeare    intend    this  ?     I 
hardly  think  so.     I  think  that,  in  the  long  scene  in 
which  Hamlet  gives  Horatio  an  account  of  his  Eng- 
lish trip,  Shakespeare  is  trying  to  entertain  the  au- 
dience ;  and  that  in  the  following  very  dreary  scene, 
when  Hamlet  banters   Osric,  Shakespeare  is  trying 
to  be  amusing.     In  the  final  duel-and-death  scene, 
Shakespeare  makes  a  haggard  attempt  at  a  brilliant 
ending.     But  alas,  the  skyey  influences  will  not  have 
it  so.     They  have  already  blown  the  theme  into  the 
sere  and  yellow.     They  have  flapped  the  life  out  of 
his  hero.     Too  well,  too  powerfully  has  the  Muse 
whispered  her  inspiration  to  the  poet  and  breathed 
into  him  the  vision  of  a  soul  killed  by  inactivity  and 
an  enterprise  sicklied  o'er  by  a  pale  cast  of  thought. 
The  tragedy  is  finished  before   the  play  ends.     The 
tail-piece  of  the  melodrama  has  no  one's  passion  to 
support  it,   and   there  survives    in   Hamlet  himself 
nothing  but  a  few  drops  of  weak  pathos  about  his 
own  fate. 


VII 

THE  MERRY  WIVES  OF  WINDSOR 

"The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor"  has  an  in- 
terest of  its  own,  because  it  belongs  to  an  inferior 
variety  of  play  and  is  unique  among  Shakespeare's 
dramas.  It  is  a  comedy  of  manners,  not  a  romantic 
drama.  The  tradition  that  this  play  was  written 
in  two  weeks,  and  at  the  request  of  Queen  Eliz- 
abeth, for  the  sake  of  showing  Falstaff  in  love,  is 
quite  probable,  for  both  its  plot  and  its  characters 
are  mechanical.  Falstaff,  Bardolph,  The  Hostess, 
etc.  had  been  created  by  Shakespeare  in  "Henry  IV, 
Part  1,"  and  some  of  them  had  reappeared  in  "Hen- 
ry IV,  Part  2."  They  came  into  existence  as  make- 
weights, figures  of  low-comedy  intended  to  balance 
the  feudal  romance  of  the  main  characters.  As  such, 
they  had  a  life-glory  of  their  own.  They  are  sponta- 
neous, inimitable,  and  they  evidently  became  pop- 
ular favorites  immediately.  In  the  "Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor"  these  same  names  are  given  to  a  set  of 
fnannequins  who  are  put  through  their  paces  in  a 
comedy,  or  farce,  of  intrigue. 

The  influence  of  court  life  thus  hangs  over  the 
"Merry  Wives,"  and  that  is  why  the  story  about 
Queen  Elizabeth,  whether  true  or  false,  has  clung  to 
the  play.  In  reading  it  one  cannot  help  realizing 
that  the  chief  blessing  of  Shakespeare's  destiny  was 
that  during  his  lifetime  the  stage  was  not  taken 
seriously  by  the  court.     Lords  and  ladies  have  need 

43 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

of  sophisticated  amusements,  conventional,  well- 
understood  entertainments,  which  are  witty,  smooth, 
and  safe.  The  command  of  a  sovereign  is  ever  that 
a  playwright  repeat  himself;  and  in  this  process  of 
repetition  a  standard  theatre  comes  into  existence. 
And  something,  too,  goes  out  of  the  playwright 
during  the  experience.  The  "Merry  Wives  of 
Windsor"  bears  to  "Twelfth  Night"  the  relation 
that  a  thing  done  to  order  bears  to  a  thing  that  a  man 
has  done  to  please  himself.  The  craftsman's  part 
is  admirable,  but  the  poetry  has  gone  out  of  the  work. 
The  "Merry  Wives"  is  crammed  with  wit,  and  yet 
there  is  no  charm  in  it,  and  the  only  bit  of  the  old 
romantic  drama  it  contains  is  the  fairy  scene  at  the 
end.  Consider  the  Falstaff  of  the  "Merry  Wives," 
how  shorn  he  is  of  that  incredible  spontaneity  and 
surprise  —  the  surprise  to  the  man  himself — that 
radiates  through  all  of  Falstaff's  talk  in  "Henry  IV." 
Consider  Dame  Quickly,  the  Hostess,  who,  in  the 
"Merry  Wives,"  is  as  clever  and  base-minded  as 
ever ;  but  she  has  become  a  type,  and  is  no  longer  an 
individual,  as  she  was  in  "Henry  IV."  Ford,  the 
jealous  husband,  is  a  thing  hacked  out  with  a  jack- 
knife;  Shallow  has  lost  his  pathos;  he  repeats  his 
old  leads  out  of  "Henry  IV,"  where  they  were  so 
beautiful,  and  brags  of  his  youthful  prowess,  but 
without  arousing  our  interest. 

The  whole  play  shows  the  influence  of  a  disturbing 
force,  and  lurches  toward  the  later  comedy.  It  is  as  if 
Paul  Veronese,  being  asked  by  a  pope  for  an  easel- 
piece,  had  done  something  in  the  style  of  Nicholas 
Poussin.  It  is  as  if  Sophocles  had  written  a  play  in 
the  style  of  the  later   Greek  Comedy  of  Manners. 

44 


THE  MERRY  WIVES  OF  WINDSOR 

Shakespeare  in  this  tour-de-main  —  the  "Merry- 
Wives" —  reveals  the  organic  nature  of  the  link 
between  romantic  and  sophisticated  comedy.  The 
result  is  due,  perhaps,  to  sheer  haste  and  indifference 
on  Shakespeare's  part.  He  retains  the  wit,  slashes 
the  characters  into  fixed  types,  and  elaborates  the 
plot.  As  a  result  you  have  the  Comedy  of  Manners. 
In  another  age  Shakespeare  might  easily  have  become 
a  court  dramatist.  He  would  have  turned  out  pot- 
boilers with  as  great  facility  as  he  turned  out  the 
"Tempest"  and  "Cymbeline." 


VIII 

OTHELLO  AND  HENRY  V 

"Othello"  is  in  one  sense  the  most  perfect  work 
of  art  in  literature.  There  is  no  excess  in  it  —  a 
thing  most  rare  in  Shakespeare.  Every  facet  is  true, 
and  casts  a  ray  upward  and  forward  toward  the  dis- 
tant focus  and  burning  spot  of  the  chmax.  For  any 
speech  in  a  play  has  a  complex  function.  It  must 
arise  from  the  circumstance,  explain  a  character  and 
unfold  it  a  little,  oppose  the  context,  move  the  story 
on  a  step,  and  be  in  itself  something  witty  and  agree- 
able, or  something  poetic  and  profound.  Besides 
all  this,  it  becomes  second  nature  with  a  playwright 
to  make  his  characters  say  things  that  have  a  double 
meaning  —  one  for  the  audience  and  one  for  the  stage 
characters. 

And  yet  the  perfection  of  Othello  as  a  play  has  been 
gained  at  a  certain  sacrifice  of  romantic  beauty.  Iji 
"Othello"  the  inordinate  powers  of  Shakespeare  be- 
came concentrated  upon  stage  technicalities  as  the 
main  point.  Everything  is  sacrificed  to  theatrical 
effect.  There  is  thus  more  to  be  gained  and  less  to  be 
lost  in  seeing  the  play  (as  opposed  to  reading  it),  than 
with  most  of  his  dramas.  Shakespeare  has  not  been 
carried  away  with  Desdemona  as  he  is  with  Juliet  and 
Ophelia  and  Imogen.  lago  seems  to  be  the  author's 
favorite.  Shakespeare  is  perfectly  enchanted  with 
lago ;  and  the  charaqter  is,  I  confess,  the  best  stage 
villain  ever  invented.j[*  Yet  lago  is  not  a  human  being 

46 


OTHELLO  AND  HENRY  V 

at  all ;  he  is  not  even  a  true  stage  character ;  he  is  a 
demon.  Bj^the^sacrific^  of  one  personage  to  diab- 
olism and  virtuosity,  the  greatest  analyst  of  human 
character  that  the  world  has  known  found  a  frame- 
work about  which  the  stage  characters  of  his  drama 
should  danceT]  He  obtained  from  lago  that  sort  of 
advantage  that  the  Greek  dramatists  drew  from  their 
chorus,  which  kept  punctuating  the  story  with  expla- 
nations, lago  has  eight  soliloquies,  in  which  he  ex- 
plains the  innumerable  and  very  complex  details  on 
which  Othello's  suspicions  are  to  hang.  These  solilo- 
quies are  the  iron  armature  that  holds  up  the  group  of 
sculpture.  They  are  the  centre  of  the  action.  They 
are  the  sine  qua  non  of  the  drama.  The  story  does  not 
tell  itself,  as  in  "Romeo  and  Juliet,"  but  is  assisted  by 
machinery. 

Uls  there  in  the  whole  history  of  cynicism  anything 
comparable  to  the  eloquence  and  magical  perfection 
of  lago's  talk  ?  Real  cynicism  is  sad ;  Mephistopheles 
is  a  dried-up,  middle-aged  clubman ;  Milton's  Satan 
is  a  rhetorician.^Eut  Ligo  is  a  black  angel,  full  of 
leaping,  spontaneous,  electrical  vitality.  He  is,  in 
truth,  the  Spirit  of  Evil,  with  no  passions  and  no 
habitation;  and  he  ought  to  have  been  shown  with 
horns  and  a  tail.  But  the  world  has  never  noted  this 
circumstance. 3The  world  accepts  Ligo  as  a  man, 
and  shudders,  feeling  nevertheless  a  little  mystified 
and  prejudiced  against  the  play.  It  is  a  tragedy  of 
intrigue,  and  lago  is  a  figure  borrowed_irom  comedy, 
a  precursor  of  the  Barber  of  Seville.V_3Ve  must  not 
think  that  Shakespeare  adopted  his  devil-machine 
intentionally :  he  was  driven  into  it  as  a  means  of 
working  the  plot.pTin  order   to  fulfill  his  function, 

47 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

lago  must  be  ubiquitous,  in  touch  with  all  classes,  a 
social  being,  a  privileged  character.  This  is  the  rea- 
son why  he  has  been  compared  to  an  innkeeper, 
lago,  being  the  showman  of  the  piece,  is  never  on  an 
even  footing  with  the  other  characters.  The  rest 
seem  to  be  in  a  hypnotic  conspiracy  to  proclaim  him 
a  fine  fellow  and  friend  to  all.  They  talk  like  parrots, 
using  the  same  words  whenever  they  mention  him. 
"Honest  lago";  "lago  is  most  honest";  "I  never 
knew  a  Florentine  more  kind  and  honest" ;  "O  that 's 
an  honest  fellow";  "Full  of  love  and  honesty"; 
"This  honest  creature"  ;  "This  fellow  's  of  exceeding 
honesty";  "Nay,  stay,  thou  shouldst  be  honest"; 
"O  brave  lago,  honest  and  just";  "An  honest  man 
he  is";  "My  friend,  thy  husband,  honest,  honest 
lago."  All  this  is  magnificent  play-writing  of  the 
sign-board  kind. 

The  scheme  of  "Othello"  is  somewhat  obvious, 
somewhat  mechanical,  and  the  result  is  that  the 
catastrophe  seems  to  follow,  not  from  fate  or  moral 
causes,  but  from  the  machinations  of  a  purposeless 
devil.  And  this  sharpness  of  touch  is  spread  over  the 
rest  of  the  play.  The  dramatic  points  are  everywhere 
rubbed  in  to  the  limit  of  human  endurance.  Desde- 
mona  is  not  merely  too  innocent,  but  in  one  place  is 
flatly  unnatural.  This  is  where  Othello  is  roaring  for 
the  handkerchief  (Act  III,  Scene  4),  and  she  refuses 
to  explain.  So  also,  Emilia,  who  has  witnessed 
Othello's  rage  over  the  lost  handkerchief,  never  ex- 
plains the  situation,  although  she  is  represented  as  a 
kind-hearted  woman  and  had  herself  stolen  the  hand- 
kerchief. Particularly  crude  is  the  repetition  of 
lago's   mode   of  dealing    with   his   various   dupes, 

48 


OTHELLO  AND  HENRY  V 

Roderigo,  Othello,  and  Cassio.  "I  have  professed 
myself  thy  friend  and  I  confess  me  knit  to  thy  deserv- 
ing with  cables  of  perdurable  toughness ;  thou  art 
sure  of  me";  "I  protest  in  the  sincerity  of  love  and 
honest  kindness" ;  "My  lord,  you  know  I  love  you," 
and  so  on. 

Many  other  examples  could  be  found  to  show  the 
coarseness  of  Shakespeare's  brush  in  "Othello."  It 
is  as  if  some  painter  with  the  technical  equipment  of 
Velasquez  had  done  a  masterpiece  in  which  all  the 
values  were  slightly  forced.  Almost  every  one  of 
Edwin  Booth's  very  remarkable  notes  on  the  play, 
which  are  printed  in  Dr.  Furness's  edition,  consists 
of  hints  to  the  actors,  telling  them  how  to  soften  the 
text  by  forbearing  to  do  the  obvious  thing :  how  to 
avoid  being  stagy. 

The  quantity  of  stage  business  in  "Othello"  in- 
jures the  poetic  temperament  of  the  play  as  we  read 
it,  and  almost  reduces  the  great  speeches  in  it  to 
what  used  to  be  called  the  "Beauties  of  Shake- 
speare." Not  so  on  the  stage.  On  the  stage  the 
characters  flock  by  us,  talking  and  thinking,  often 
talking  to  themselves,  sometimes  pursuing  two  trains 
of  thought  at  once.  Rapid  short  scenes  following 
one  another  with  no  curtains  between  —  what  a 
system  was  this  to  give  life  to  a  play  !  As  an  example 
of  swiftness  take  the  second  scene  of  Act  L  There 
are  two  distinct  search-parties  who  are  out  after 
Othello. 

Iago.     He  's  married. 
Cassio.    To  who? 

{Reenter  Othello.) 
Iago.     Marry,  to  —  Come,  Captain,  will  you  go  ? 

49 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

Othello.    Have  with  you. 

Cassio.     Here  comes  another  troop  to  seek  for  you. 

When  the  plot  once  gets  started,  the  pace  at  which 
it  moves  is  really  the  pace  at  which  Othello's  sus- 
picions develop.  The  audience  is  thinking  about 
the  inner  problems ;  and  I  suppose  there  is  nowhere 
in  literature  any  picture  of  a  passion  that  is  so  rapid 
in  its  progress  as  Othello's  jealousy.  It  is  like  a 
prairie  fire ;  and  the  externals  of  the  action  keep  pace 
with  it.  Any  page  of  the  play  will  illustrate  this ; 
but  I  will  cite  two  passages,  which  occur  toward  the 
end,  and  show  on  what  a  small  scale  the  play  must 
be  conceived  in  order  to  be  staged  naturally.  The 
scene  in  which  Othello  strikes  Desdemona  occurs 
just  after  he  has  had  a  seizure,  and  has  fallen  uncon- 
scious through  passion.  Lodovico  has  arrived  from 
Venice  with  a  letter,  on  which  Othello  tries  in  vain 
to  fix  his  attention,  while  he  is  really  thinking  of  Cas- 
sio, and  listening  to  the  talk  of  the  others. 

LoDovico.    The  duke  and  senators  of  Venice  greet  you. 

(Gives  him  a  letter^ 
Othello.     I  kiss  the  instrument  of  their  pleasures. 

{Opens  the  letter  and  reads.) 
Desdemona.     And    what 's     the     news,    good     cousin 

Lodovico  ? 
Iago.     I  am  very  glad  to  see  you,  signior ; 

Welcome  to  Cyprus. 
LoD.     I  thank  you.    How  does  Lieutenant  Cassio .'' 
Iago.     Lives,  sir. 
Des.     Cousin,  there  's  fallen  between  him  and  my  lord 

An  unkind  breach ;  but  you  shall  make  all  well. 
0th.     Are  you  sure  of  that  ? 
Des.     My  lord  ? 

so 


OTHELLO  AND  HENRY  V 

0th.    {reads)  "This  fail  you  not  to  do,  as  you  will — " 
LoD.     He  did  not  call;  he  's  busy  in  the  paper. 

Is  there  division  'twixt  my  lord  and  Cassio  ? 
Des.     a  most  unhappy  one :  I  would  do  much 

To  atone  them,  for  the  love  I  bear  to  Cassio. 
0th.     Fire  and  brimstone ! 
Des.  My  lord  ? 

0th,  Are  you  wise  ? 

Des.     What,  is  he  angry  ? 
LoD.  May  be  the  letter  mov'd  him; 

For,  as  I  think,  they  do  command  him  home 

Deputing  Cassio  in  his  government. 
Des.     By  my  troth,  I  am  glad  on  't. 
0th.  Indeed  ? 

Des.  My  lord  ? 

0th.     I  am  glad  to  see  you  mad. 

Des.  Why,  sweet  Othello  ? 

0th.     Devil !     {Striking  her) 

Des.  I  have  not  deserv'd  this. 

LoD.     My  lord,  this  would  not  be  believ'd  in  Venice, 

Though  I  should  swear  I  saw  't :  't  is  very  much : 

Make  her  amends ;  she  weeps. 

The  characters  are  here  as  complex,  and  almost  as 
inarticulate,  as  they  would  be  in  real  life ;  and  the 
whole  thing  passes  in  a  moment.  You  cannot  put 
stilts  on  such  a  scene,  or  recite  it  in  Alexandrines :  it 
is  domestic  tragedy. 

The  last  act  of  "Othello"  opens  with  a  typical 
hurly-burly,  which  takes  place  in  the  dark,  with 
persons  entering  and  leaving  at  such  a  rate  that  no 
audience  can  keep  track  as  to  just  what  is  happening. 
Eight  characters  are  involved;  one  is  killed;  one 
wounded.  The  whole  scene  has  been  devised  very 
cleverly,  almost  too  cleverly,  and  is  generally  cut 

61 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

down  in  the  acting;  but  perhaps  the  best  way  is  to 
play  it,  and  play  it  fast.  These  hurly-burlies  are  a 
conventional  feature  in  Shakespeare,  like  the  "  tragic 
loading"  of  the  stage  with  dead  bodies  in  the  finale. 
They  have  the  qualities  of  the  charade,  and  are  most 
difficult  to  retain  in  a  large  modern  theatre. 

In  order  that  we  may  get  away  for  a  moment  from 
the  lyrical  Shakespeare  of  "Romeo  and  Juliet"  and 
the  playwright's  Shakespeare  of  "Othello,"  let  us 
jump  to  a  style  very  dissimilar  to  both.  In  this  way 
we  may  view  the  subject  from  a  new  perspective. 
When  I  was  a  boy,  there  was  an  actor  called  Rignold, 
who  hired  a  few  curtains,  pasteboard  castle  walls,  and 
painted  wooden  cannon,  and  gave  the  play  of  "Henry 
V."  He  was  handsome  and  well-made,  with  a  fine 
walk  and  presence,  and  was  a  magnificent  reciter  of 
blank  verse.  I  cannot  to-day  read  the  great  speeches 
of  that  play  without  hearing  his  voice  and  seeing  his 
gestures.  There  was  little  in  that  whole  performance 
to  carry  an  audience,  except  Rignold's  wonderful 
declamation;  but  it  was  enough,  "Henry  V"  is  one 
of  the  few  dramas  that  can  bear  this  treatment.  The 
story  moves  very  slowly  like  a  pageant,  like  a  series  of 
frescoes  accompanied  by  the  music  of  stately,  ornate, 
eloquent  speeches,  choruses,  and  rhapsodies.  But 
how  many  persons  living  are  there  who  can  recite  the 
following  chorus  (Act  III,  Prologue)  and  keep  it 
interesting  ? 

Chorus.     Thus  with  imagin'd  wing  our  swift  scene  flies 
In  motion  of  no  less  celerity 
Than  that  of  thought.    Suppose  that  you  have 

seen 
The  well-appointed  king  at  Hampton  pier 


OTHELLO  AND  HENRY  V 

Embark  his  royalty;  and  his  brave  fleet 
With  silken  streamers  the  young  Phoebus  fan- 
ning : 
Play  with  your  fancies,  and  in  them  behold 
Upon  the  hempen  tackle  ship-boys  climbing ; 
Hear  the  shrill  whistle  which  doth  order  give 
To  sounds  confus'd;  behold  the  threaden  sails, 
Borne  with  the  invisible  and  creepingVind, 
Draw  the  huge  bottoms  through  the  furrow'd  sea, 
Breasting  the  lofty  surge :  O,  do  but  think 
You  stand  upon  the  rivage  and  behold 
A  city  on  the  inconstant  billows  dancing; 
For  so  appears  this  fleet  majestical, 
Holding  due  course  to  Harfleur.    Follow,  follow  : 
Grapple  your  minds  to  sternage  of  this  navy, 
And  leave  your  England,  as  dead  midnight  still, 
Guarded    with    grandsires,    babies,    and    old 

women. 
Either  past  or  not  arriv'd  to  pith  and  puissance; 
For  who  is  he,  whose  chin  is  but  enrich'd 
With  one  appearing  hair,  that  will  not  follow 
These    cull'd    and    choice-drawn    cavaliers    to 

France  ? 
Work,  work  your  thoughts,  and  therein  see  a 

siege ; 
Behold  the  ordnance  on  their  carriages. 
With  fatal  mouths  gaping  on  girded  Harfleur. 
Suppose  the  ambassador  from  the  French  comes 

back; 
Tells  Harry  that  the  king  doth  offer  him 
Katherine  his  daughter,  and  with  her,  to  dowry, 
Some  petty  and  unprofitable  dukedoms. 
The  offer  likes  not :  and  the  nimble  gunner 
With  linstock  now  the  devilish  cannon  touches, 
{alarum,  and  chambers  go  off) 
And  down  goes  all  before  them.    Still,  be  kind, 
And  eke  out  our  performance  with  your  mind. 

63 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

As  spoken  on  Shakespeare's  stage,  to  a  small  audi- 
ence, which  relied  entirely  on  its  imagination  and 
was  following  the  tale,  this  chorus,  no  doubt,  floated 
by  easily  on  its  natural  beauties.  But  to  speak  it 
before  the  curtain  in  a  modern  opera  house,  consum- 
ing, of  course,  twice  the  time  that  the  lines  formerly 
required,  is  a  problem  that  would  tax  the  elocution  of 
Salvini.  Not  only  must  the  actor's  utterance  be 
slower,  but  his  gait  and  gestures,  his  thought  and  feel- 
ing, his  whole  art  and  craft  must  deal  in  fewer  ideas  and 
in  a  larger  symbolism  than  the  earlier  stage  required. 
Of  a  truth  we  face  harder  problems  in  staging  Shake- 
speare to-day  than  were  known  to  the  Elizabethans. 

When  the  English  people  began  to  take  Shake- 
speare seriously  in  the  early  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  their  tendency  was  to  focus  the  lights  on  the 
leading  characters.  People  went  to  the  theatre  to  see 
Betterton  and  Cibber  and  Garrick  and  the  rest.  This 
practice  of  "starring"  was  at  first  an  unconscious 
innovation ;  the  intensive  study  of  Shakespeare's 
great  roles  became  the  history  of  the  British  Stage. 
The  old  tales  were  a  little  distorted  in  the  process, 
because  the  chief  characters  were  now  endowed  by 
the  public  with  too  much  importance.  The  original, 
plain  story-telling  purpose  of  the  play  was  all  but  for- 
gotten. Such  is  the  natural  history  of  art.  It  begins 
by  story-telling  and  it  ends  in  virtuosity.  Stendhal 
said  that  the  most  powerful  rendering  of  Shakespeare 
which  he  had  ever  witnessed  was  done  in  a  barn.  If 
our  managers  will  but  remember  the  humble  sur- 
roundings to  which  the  children  of  Shakespeare's  wit 
were  born,  a  great  many  qualities  which  are  to-day 
lost  in  the  staging  will  reappear  in  the  plays. 


IX 

KING  LEAR 

There  is  something  to  be  gained  by  an  irrespon- 
sible and  random  flight  through  Shakespeare.  The 
sublime  is  inaccessible  to  study,  and  Shakespeare's 
greatest  poetry,  dealing  as  it  does  with  minds  dis- 
traught, with  the  chaotic  emotions  of  dislocated 
natures,  cannot  be  understood  by  a  well-ordered  and 
correct  attention.  We  must  be  dreamy  and  indif- 
ferent as  we  read  "Hamlet."  We  must  accept  and 
relinquish  the  scenes  in  "King  Lear"  without  an 
attempt  to  understand  them.  Their  meaning  will 
be  surrendered  to  us  later  by  memory,  and  will  live 
in  those  regions  where  the  things  themselves  were 
born,  on  the  threshold  of  the  unconscious  and  the 
incommunicable. 

The  play  "King  Lear"  has  shown  that  it  will  sur- 
vive any  treatment.  It  was  fitted  with  a  happy  end- 
ing by  Nahum  Tate  in  Charles  the  Second's  time, 
and  the  version  held  the  stage  for  one  hundred  and 
sixty  years.  In  the  meantime  all  the  great  minds 
of  Europe  had  had  their  say  about  it,  and  many 
great  actors  of  Europe  had  done  what  human  genius 
could  do  to  interpret  it.  There  grew  up,  both  in 
Germany  and  in  England,  a  great  public  of  educated 
persons,  who  knew  every  word  of  the  play  by  heart, 
and  attended  a  performance  of  "King  Lear"  much 
as  a  modern  audience  attends  the  performance  by 
some  new  pianist  of  one  of  Beethoven's  great  sonatas. 

55 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

In  fact  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  did 
for  "Lear,"  "Hamlet,"  "Macbeth,"  "Othello,"  and 
"Richard  III"  what  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  did  for  Beethoven :  they  produced  a  special 
race  of  prodigious  experts,  created  by  the  plays  and  by 
the  music  —  gladiators  of  art,  who  gave  exhibitions 
on  a  scale  undreamed  of  by  Shakespeare  or  Bee- 
thoven, and  produced  effects  that  would  have 
startled  the  creators.  Beethoven  was,  no  doubt,  a 
musical  person,  and  he  was  by  profession  a  pianist; 
but  if  Beethoven  were  to  play  one  of  his  concertos 
before  a  modern  audience,  which  knew  every  inter- 
pretation that  the  work  has  undergone  since  the 
times  of  Liszt  and  Rubenstein,  he  would  cut  a  sorry 
figure.  The  size  of  the  instrument,  the  size  of  the 
auditorium,  and  the  expectations  of  the  public  would 
crush  him. 

The  exploitation  of  Shakespeare  as  a  field  for 
starring  came  to  a  climax  first  in  Garrick  and  next 
in  Edmund  Kean,  who,  to  judge  by  all  accounts, 
was  the  greatest  of  English  actors,  and  became  to 
the  British  stage  what  Rachel  was  to  the  French 
stage,  the  messiah  of  an  epoch  when  people  went  to 
the  theatre,  not  to  see  a  play,  but  to  see  an  actor. 
By  the  sacrifice  of  all  other  interests  to  this  one  in- 
terest certain  effects  were  produced  which  will  not 
soon  be  repeated.  They  imply  that  the  whole  pas- 
sion of  an  age  is  bent  toward  representing  with 
virtuosity  something  that  has  been  created,  schemed, 
and  brought  to  a  focus  by  former  genius.  At  such 
epochs  the  actor  is  classed  by  the  public  as  almost 
the  poet's  equal. 

I  transcribe  a    few  critiques  on   Edmund  Kean 

66 


KING  LEAR 

from  the  treasure-house  out  of  which  most  of  my 
learning  is  drawn  —  Mr.  Furness's  edition  :  — 

It  has  been  said  that  "Lear"  was  a  study  for  anyone  who 
would  make  himself  acquainted  with  the  workings  of  an 
insane  mind.  There  is  no  doubt  of  it.  And  it  is  no  less 
true  that  Mr.  Kean  was  a  perfect  exemplification  of  it. 
His  eye,  when  his  senses  are  first  forsaking  him,  giving  a 
questioning  look  at  what  he  saw,  as  if  all  before  him  was 
undergoing  a  strange  and  bewildering  change  which  con- 
fused his  brain  —  the  wandering,  lost  motions  of  his  hands, 
which  seemed  feeling  for  something  familiar  to  them,  on 
which  they  might  take  hold,  and  be  assured  of  a  safe 
reality  —  the  under  monotone  of  his  voice,  as  if  he  was 
questioning  his  own  being,  and  all  which  surrounded  him 

—  the  continuous,  but  slight  oscillating  motion  of  the  body, 

—  all  expressed,  with  fearful  truth,  the  dreamy  state  of  a 
mind  fast  unsettling,  and  making  vain  and  weak  eflForts  to 
find  its  way  back  to  its  wonted  reason.  There  was  a  child- 
ish, feeble  gladness  in  the  eye,  and  a  half-piteous  smile 
about  the  mouth  at  times,  which  one  could  scarce  look  upon 
without  shedding  tears.  As  the  derangement  increased 
upon  him,  his  eye  lost  its  notice  of  what  surrounded  him, 
wandering  over  everything  as  if  he  saw  it  not,  and  fasten- 
ing upon  the  creatures  of  his  crazed  brain.  The  helpless 
and  dignified  fondness  with  which  he  clings  to  Edgar  as  an 
insane  brother  is  another  instance  of  the  justness  of  Mr. 
Kean's  conceptions.  Nor  does  he  lose  the  air  of  insanity 
even  in  the  fine  moralizing  parts,  and  where  he  inveighs 
against  the  corruptions  of  the  world.  There  is  a  madness 
even  in  his  reason.  .  .  . 

Since  his  first  appearance  at  Drury  Lane  he  had  never 
lost  an  opportunity  of  improving  his  attainment  in  "Lear"; 
so  anxious  was  he  to  impart  truth  and  natural  coloring 
to  his  performance  that,  in  order  to  observe  the  details 
and  manifestations  of  real  insanity,  he  constantly  visited 
St.  Luke's  and  Bethlehem  hospitals  ere  he   appeared  in 

67 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

the  old  King ;  and,  tranquilly  relying  upon  the  unfailing 
fertility  of  his  intellectual  resources,  he  anticipated  this 
effort  as  the  last  seal  of  his  theatrical  renown.  He  knew 
that,  when  he  came  to  the  trial,  his  mind  would  be  thor- 
oughly imbued  with  the  properties  of  the  character;  and, 
fearless  as  to  the  result,  he  quietly  said  that  he  would  make 
the  audience  as  mad  as  he  himself  should  be.  .  .  . 

Who  that  once  heard  can  ever  forget  the  terrors  of  that 
terrific  curse,  where,  in  the  wild  storm  of  his  conflicting 
passions,  he  threw  himself  on  his  knees,  "lifted  up  his  arms, 
like  withered  stumps,  threw  his  head  quite  back  and,  in 
that  position,  as  if  severed  from  all  that  held  him  to  society, 
breathed  a  heart-struck  prayer,  like  the  figure  of  a  man 
obtruncated"  ?  .  .  . 

The  next  scene  is  the  finish  of  the  whole  performance, 
and  certainly  it  is  the  noblest  execution  of  lofty  genius 
that  the  modern  stage  has  ever  witnessed  —  always  except- 
ing the  same  actor's  closing  scene  in  the  Third  Act  of 
"Othello."  It  is  impossible  for  words  to  convey  anything 
like  an  adequate  description  of  the  extraordinary  acting  in 
the  whole  of  this  scene  —  of  the  electrical  effect  produced 
from  the  transition  from  "  Bid  'em  come  forth  and  hear 
me,"  etc.,  to  "O,  are  you  come  ?"  —  the  mingled  suspicion 
and  tenderness  with  which  he  tells  Regan  of  Goneril's 
treatment  of  him  ;  the  exquisite  tone  of  pathos  thrown  into 
the  mock  petition  to  Regan,  "  I  confess  that  I  am  old,"  etc. ; 
the  wonderful  depth  and  nobility  of  expression  given  to  the 
ironical  speech  to  Goneril,  "I  did  not  bid  the  thunder- 
bearer  strike,"  etc. ;  the  pure  and  touching  simplicity  of  "I 
gave  you  all";  and  lastly,  the  splendid  close  of  this  scene 
with  the  speech,  "  Heavens,  drop  your  patience  down,"  etc., 
in  which  the  bitter  delight  of  anticipated  revenge,  and  the 
unbending  sense  of  habitual  dignity,  contend  against  the 
throes  and  agonies  of  a  torn  and  bursting  heart. 

After  such  a  series  of  heroic  actors  as  Garrick, 
Kemble,  Kean,  Booth,  and  Salvini,  the  kaleidoscope 

68 


KING  LEAR 

of  time  must  fall  into  new  shapes  before  other  aspects 
of  Shakespeare  can  reveal  themselves.  It  will  not 
be  till  some  years  after  the  death  of  Josef  Hoffman 
and  our  other  titanic  pianists,  that  humanity  will 
dare  creep  toward  a  new  understanding  of  Bee- 
thoven. Yet  time  passes,  manners  change.  We 
can  never  be  sure  that  we  ourselves  should  have 
liked  Garrick's  Hamlet,  or  have  been  carried  away 
by  Paganini.  I  have  seen  Edwin  Booth  and  Sal- 
vini,  who  were  the  latest  stars  in  the  slowly  setting 
galaxy  —  or,  as  it  were,  dynasty  —  of  great  tra- 
gedians ;  and  I  am  going  to  confess  that  in  "  King 
Lear,"  though  each  was  extraordinary,  there  did 
not  seem  to  be  mists  and  clouds  enough  about  the 
old  King.  The  mind's  theatre  was  too  bare;  Lear 
had  slipped  his  envelope  and  was  too  isolated,  too 
visible,  too  articulate,  too  cunningly  lighted.  I 
believe  that  this  effect  was  due,  not,  as  Charles 
Lamb  would  have  it,  to  Shakespeare's  unfitness  for 
the  stage,  but  to  the  neglect  by  modern  stage  man- 
agers of  the  minor  plots  and  minor  characters  in  the 
drama. 

It  was  long  ago  discovered  that  two  very  similar 
legends  are  woven  together  in  this  play  —  the  story 
of  Lear,  and  a  tale  about  an  old  man  and  his  two 
sons  which  Shakespeare  probably  ran  across  in  Sid- 
ney's "Arcadia."  Why  were  these  two  stories 
combined  ? 

The  mystery  of  "King  Lear"  lies  in  the  strange 
sheaf  of  things  that  Shakespeare  grasped  in  his  hand 
before  he  began  to  write  the  play.  It  was  to  be  a 
tragedy  —  that  is  to  say,  a  great  many  of  the  char- 
acters were  to  be  killed.     Eleven  of  them  are  killed, 

69 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

only  the  colorless  Albany  being  left  alive  —  Albany 
who  has  hardly  a  cue  at  all  during  the  evening.  The 
plot  was  to  be  about  King  Lear  and  his  wicked 
daughters.  King  Lear  was  to  be  driven  forth  in  a 
storm,  to  go  mad,  and  die.  But  this  theme  was  not 
large  enough  for  Shakespeare.  His  instinct  for 
quantity  and  for  reduplications  had  led  him  in  "Ham- 
let" to  reinforce  the  equivocal  madness  of  Hamlet 
with  the  real  madness  of  Ophelia.  In  "Richard 
III,"  he  had  multiplied  curses  and  ghosts.  Such 
devices  support  each  other  dramatically.  In  "  King 
Lear"  he  pursues  the  bold  plan  of  having  the  whole 
tragedy  of  filial  ingratitude  toward  Lear  shadowed 
by  a  second  tragedy  of  filial  ingratitude  toward  an- 
other old  man,  Gloucester.  This  second  old  man 
must  not  only  have  one  good  son  and  one  bad  son, 
but  he  must  be  blinded,  thrust  out  alone  into  the 
countryside,  and  bidden  to  smell  his  way  to  Dover, 
so  that  he  may  become  a  pendant  to  Lear. 

Lear  is  to  go  mad :  therefore  there  must  be  other 
mad  persons,  or  pretended  mad  persons,  or  irrespon- 
sible persons,  to  support  Lear's  madness.  A  mad 
person  surrounded  by  sane  persons  on  the  stage  is 
lonely.  In  a  good  tragedy  the  terrors  and  curses 
and  general  hellward  tendency  of  things  must  affect 
as  many  minds  and  persons  as  possible.  Thus  when 
the  old  man,  Gloucester,  goes  out  with  a  torch  to 
rescue  the  ving  in  the  storm,  he  says,  in  the  presence 
of  the  really  mad  King,  and  of  the  pretended  mad 
Edgar,  and  of  the  Fool,  that  he  is  almost  mad  him- 
self,—  "grief  has  crazed  his  wits"  —  the  remark 
applies  to  almost  everyone  on  the  stage. 

All  these  mad  people  are  good  people.     And  there 

60 


KING  LEAR 

is  to  be  another  good  man,  Kent,  a  faithful  follower 
of  Lear  whom  Shakespeare  brings  in  in  disguise. 
Therefore  there  must  be  more  disguises,  and  Edgar 
is  introduced  in  five  different  ones.  As  a  character 
in  disguise  Edgar  supports  Kent ;  as  the  good  son  of 
an  unjust  parent,  he  supports  Cordelia;  as  a  pre- 
tended madman,  he  supports  the  King  and  the  Fool. 
Note  that  Cordelia,  Kent,  the  Fool,  Edgar,  and  old 
Gloucester  are  all  in  sympathy  with  the  King,  and 
all  are  involved  with  the  King  in  one  brainstorm,  or, 
as  someone  has  called  it,  in  the  "  globose  of  whirling 
passion."  For  fear  that  even  this  battalion  of  sym- 
pathetic characters  will  not  suffice  as  a  sounding- 
board  to  Lear,  Shakespeare  has  thrown  in  a  de- 
scription of  a  sympathetic  Gentleman,  who  heralds 
the  entry  of  Lear  in  the  storm,  and  gives  us  a  picture 
of  the  old  man  running  unbonneted  and  bidding 
what  will  take  all.  It  is  to  this  bushel-basket  in- 
stinct of  Shakespeare's  that  we  owe  the  unique  and 
tremendous  power  of  "Lear";  and  seem  to  watch 
(as  Hudson  said)  "a  handful  of  tumult  enbosomed 
in  a  sea,  gradually  overspreading,  pervading,  and 
convulsing  the  entire  mass."  Let  us  return  to  the 
list  of  characters. 

In  a  tragedy  there  must  be  some  wicked  people. 
The  bad  daughters  of  the  Lear  legend  supply  two 
of  them,  and  they  are  exactly  alike.  Lear  is  first 
cut  to  the  heart  by  one  daughter,  then  by  the  next. 
The  critics  have  tried  to  distinguish  their  roles,  but 
it  cannot  be  done.  Goneril  and  Regan  are  mere 
names,  which  allow  Shakespeare  to  double  his  in- 
strument. 

Two    other    wicked    people    are    provided,  —  as 

61 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

wicked  as  possible,  —  in  the  nursery-tale  manner; 
namely,  Edmund  and  Cornwall.  They  assist  in 
persecuting  the  two  good  old  men,  Lear  and  Glouces- 
ter; and  they  do  it  in  the  crudest  manner,  as  under- 
studies. 

But  a  tragedy  also  needs  a  chorus,  a  moralist,  a 
commentator,  a  Melancholy  Jaques,  Shakespeare 
himself —  the  Fool. 

If  I  had  not  been  told  so  often  that  the  theme  of 
Shakespeare's  "Lear"  was  filial  ingratitude,  I  should 
have  said  that  the  theme  was  houseless  poverty,  and 
"blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit."  All  the  good 
people  in  the  play  are  obsessed  with  the  idea  of  the 
sacredness  of  beggars.  The  greatest  scenes  of  the 
play  stage  this  idea.  The  talk  about  poverty  begins 
immediately  after  the  King's  abdication.  Almost 
the  first  words  that  Kent  says  to  Lear  are :  — 

Kent.  A  very  honest-hearted  fellow,  and  as  poor  as 
the  King. 

Lear.  If  thou  be  as  poor  for  a  subject  as  he  is  for  a 
King,  thou  art  poor  enough. 

Now  it  is  out  of  character  for  Lear  to  say  this ;  but 
as  the  point  must  be  made,  and  there  is  no  one  else 
on  the  stage  to  make  it,  Shakespeare  gives  the  cue 
to  Lear.  (It  makes  less  difference  who  says  a  thing 
on  the  stage  than  most  people  will  believe.) 

The  Fool  soon  rings  the  changes  on  the  thought  of 
poverty,  and  Kent,  when  in  the  stocks,  says  "noth- 
ing almost  sees  miracles,  but  poverty."  Immedi- 
ately after  this  Edgar,  being  alone  on  the  stage,  gives 
his  monody  on  Poverty :  — 

62 


KING  LEAR 

I  heard  myself  proclaimed ; 

And  by  the  happy  hollow  of  a  tree 

Escaped  the  hunt. 

•  •••••• 

I  will  preserve  myself:  and  am  bethought 

To  take  the  basest  and  most  poorest  shape 

That  ever  penury  in  contempt  of  man 

Brought  near  to  beast :  my  face  I  '11  grime  with  filth, 

Blanket  my  loins,  elf  all  my  hair  in  knots. 

And  with  presented  nakedness  out-face 

The  winds  and  persecutions  of  the  sky. 

The  country  gives  me  proof  and  precedent 

Of  Bedlam  beggars,  who  with  roaring  voices 

Strike  in  their  numbed  and  mortified  bare  arms 

Pins,  wooden  pricks,  nails,  sprigs  of  rosemary; 

And  with  this  horrible  object,  from  low  farms, 

Poor  pelting  villages,  sheep-cotes  and  mills. 

Sometime  with  lunatic  bans,  sometime  with  prayers 

Enforce  their  charity. 

The  thought  of  poverty  again  flits  by  in  Lear's 

O  reason  not  the  need :  our  basest  beggars 

Are  in  their  poorest  things  superfluous : 

Allow  not  nature  more  than  nature  needs, 

Man's  life  's  as  cheap  as  beast's :  thou  art  a  lady ; 

If  only  to  go  warm  were  gorgeous. 

Why,  nature  needs  not  what  thou  gorgeous  wear'st. 

Which  scarcely  keeps  thee  warm. 

The  King  is  still  thinking  about  the  poor,  as  he 
allows  the  Fool  to  lead  him  to  the  hovel :  — 

Lear.     Come  on,  my  boy :  how  dost,  my  boy  .''  art  cold  ? 
I  am  cold  myself.     Where  is  this  straw,  my  fel- 
low ? 
The  art  of  our  necessities  is  strange, 

63 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

That  can  make    vile  things  precious.     Come,  your 
hovel. 

The  theme  comes  in  with  trumpets  in  the  scene 
before  the  hovel. 

Poor  naked  wretches,  wheresoe'er  you  are. 
That  bide  the  pelting  of  this  pitiless  storm, 
How  shall  your  houseless  heads  and  unfed  sides, 
Your  loop'd  and  window'd  raggedness,  defend  you 
From  seasons  such  as  these  ?     O,  I  have  ta'en 
Too  little  care  of  this  !     Take  physic,  pomp ; 
Expose  thyself  to  feel  what  wretches  feel. 
That  thou  mayst  shake  the  superflux  to  them 
And  show  the  heavens  more  just. 

Lear  is  so  obsessed  by  the  thought  of  poverty,  that 
at  the  sight  of  Edgar  he  tries  to  tear  off  his  own 
clothes. 

Lear.  Why,  thou  wert  better  in  thy  grave  than  to 
answer  with  thy  uncovered  body  this  extremity  of  the 
skies.  Is  man  no  more  than  this  ?  Consider  him  well. 
Thou  owest  the  worm  no  silk,  the  beast  no  hide,  the  sheep 
no  wool,  the  cat  no  perfume.  Ha !  here  's  three  on  's  are 
sophisticated.  Thou  art  the  thing  itself :  unaccommodated 
man  is  no  more  but  such  a  poor,  bare,  forked  animal  as 
thou  art.     Off,  off,  you  lendings !  come,  unbutton  here. 

\Tearing  off  his  clothes) 

The  theme  is  given  out  again  by  Gloucester,  in 
words  which  are  all  but  a  repetition  of  Lear's,  and  are 
an  expansion  of  Kent's  remark  in  the  stocks :  — 

Glou.  That  I  am  wretched 

Makes  thee  the  happier.     Heavens,  deal  so  still ! 
Let  the  superfluous  and  lust-dieted  man. 
That  slaves  your  ordinance,  that  will  not  see 


KING  LEAR 

Because  he  doth  not  feel,  feel  your  power  quickly ; 
So  distribution  should  undo  excess 
And  each  man  have  enough. 

And  Edgar  says  the  same  thing  again  in  the  fields 
near  Dover  when,  in  the  disguise  of  a  peasant,  he 
meets  his  father. 

Glou.     Now,  good  sir,  what  are  you  .'' 

Edgar.  A  most  poor  man,  made  tame  to  fortune's  blows ; 

Who,  by  the  art  of  known  and  feeling  sorrows, 

Am  pregnant  to  good  pity. 

Observe  that  all  these  sentiments  are  perfectly 
natural  in  the  mouths  of  all  these  characters,  because 
of  the  antiphonal  basis  on  which  the  whole  play  is 
set  up.  The  inner  structure  of  "King  Lear,"  and 
the  reinforcements  of  character  by  character,  and 
effect  by  effect,  are  what  make  it  the  greatest  of 
Shakespeare's  tragedies. 

The  power  of  iteration  on  the  stage  was  never 
better  illustrated.  Every  speech  strikes  in  the  same 
spot  on  the  same  musical  anvil.  Before  Lear  ac- 
tually goes  mad,  he  prophesies  eight  times,  in  cre- 
scendo, that  he  is  about  to  go  mad.  Perhaps  the  true 
resemblance  between  Shakespeare's  tragedies  and 
Greek  tragedy  is  to  be  found  in  this  passion  of  Shake- 
speare for  converging  repetitions  of  thought. 

In  producing  this  play,  its  inner  structure  must  be 
borne  in  mind.  Unless  the  underplots  and  minor 
characters  are  staged  in  an  interesting  way,  the  play 
will  lose  half  its  power;  for  it  is  upon  the  strings  of 
these  half-heard  instruments  that  the  resonance  of 
the  whole  depends.  The  entire  text  cannot  be  given, 
it  is  too  long :  the  problem  is  to  keep  the  tale  moving 

66 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

by  using  the  vital  parts  of  it.  Much  costume,  much 
scenery,  or  a  too  elaborate  storm,  will  kill  the  drama. 
We  should  accept  the  conventions  of  a  crude  sym- 
bolism, and  patch  together  the  scenes  with  a  free 
Elizabethan  hand,  so  that  a  child  or  an  ignorant 
person  can  follow  the  story. 

Shakespeare  often  uses  a  change  of  scene  as  we 
to-day  use  a  drop  curtain  —  merely  to  break  in  upon 
a  long  interview,  and  give  variety. 

Thus,  the  scene  where  Kent  is  in  the  stocks  is 
divided  by  the  apparition  of  Edgar  on  the  heath. 
The  madness  of  Lear  in  the  hovel  scene  is  separated 
from  his  madness  at  the  farmhouse  by  a  short  and 
very  dull  interview  between  the  two  villains,  Edmund 
and  Cornwall. 

The  whole  of  this  play,  after  the  opening  pageant 
of  the  abdication,  is  a  medley  of  detached  scenes :  it  is 
in  form  a  scatterbrained  play,  and  in  substance  the 
most  solid  thing  in  human  drama. 

One  more  kind  of  iteration  in  it  must  be  noticed. 
Part  of  the  pathos  in  "Lear"  comes  from  the  way  in 
which  the  old  gentleman  is  haled  about  from  one  place 
to  another. 

We  see  him  first  refused  admittance  at  Albany's 
palace ;  then  thrust  out  in  the  storm  from  Glouces- 
ter's palace ;  then  on  the  heath  in  the  storm ;  then 
before  a  hovel  in  the  storm ;  then  rescued  by  Glouces- 
ter and  taken  to  a  farmhouse  in  the  storm;  next, 
removed  on  a  pallet  from  the  farmhouse;  next, 
wandering  in  the  fields  near  Dover;  next,  on  a  bed, 
asleep  in  a  tent  in  the  French  camp ;  then  being  led 
by  soldiers  across  the  stage,  in  company  with  Cor- 
delia, to  find  a  place  of  safety ;  then  brought  on  the 

66 


KING  LEAR 

stage  in  company  with  Cordelia,  both  of  them  as 
prisoners;  next,  led  off  the  stage,  guarded;  and 
finally,  reentering,  with  the  dead  body  of  Cordelia  in 
his  arms. 

We  must  deal  with  the  stage  business  in  "Lear" 
with  as  light  a  hand  as  if  it  were  a  farce,  and  the 
tragedy  in  it  will  take  care  of  itself. 


X 

MACBETH 

There  are  so  many  reasons  why  Shakespeare's 
greater  plays  affect  us  powerfully,  that  it  seems  like 
fatuity  to  point  out  special  good  qualities  in  any  one 
of  them ;  yet,  as  a  great  many  people  have  tried  their 
hand  at  this,  and  the  practice  never  seems  to  have 
injured  the  plays,  I  will  hazard  a  few  remarks  upon 
the  nature  of  dramatic  writing,  and  illustrate  them 
with  the  play  of  "Macbeth." 

The  main  point  about  dramatic  writing  is  that 
everything  must  be  made  obvious.  A  man  who 
writes  a  book  may  state  his  idea  and  develop  it  and 
adorn  it  at  leisure.  He  may  even  hide  it  with 
charms,  and  compensate  the  reader  in  a  hundred 
ways  for  his  obscurity.  But  in  a  theatre  ideas  must 
be  delivered  through  a  series  of  shocks.  Shake- 
speare's method  of  doing  this  is  by  the  contrast  of 
opposites.  He  places  two  effects  beside  one  another, 
and  causes  the  idea  to  jump  out  by  the  contact. 
This  is  true  as  to  his  great  effects  of  element  with 
element,  conception  with  conception,  scene  with 
scene.  It  is  true  also  of  his  dramatis  personae.  He 
must  have  kings  and  beggars,  good  angels  and 
devils.  It  is  true  also  of  the  give-and-take  of  his 
dialogue.  The  dazzling  play  of  opposites  through- 
out Shakespeare,  whether  in  adjectives,  phrases, 
scenes,  characters,  or  climaxes,  is  what  makes  him 

68 


MACBETH 

stageable.  Say  "Heaven"  to  him,  he  says  "Hell"; 
"Black,"  — "White";  "To  be,"— "Not  to  be." 
He  shadows  each  impression  with  a  double  that  has 
been  refracted  from  the  thing  itself,  and  causes  an 
idea  to  stand  in  the  air  vividly,  like  an  apparition. 
This  double-flash  in  Shakespeare  is  to  be  found  in 
his  earliest  and  in  his  latest  work.  There  is  a  famous 
emendation  of  his  text  which  shows  up  this  action  of 
his  mind  in  a  startling  manner.  In  "Love  's  Labor's 
Lost"  the  professed  love-hater,  Biron,  gives  a  whim- 
sical description  of  Cupid,  calling  him  "a  wimpled, 
whining,  purblind,  wayward  boy,"  "a  regent  of  love- 
rhymes,  lord  of  folded  arms,"  etc.  One  of  the  lines 
in  the  folio  text  reads  as  follows :  — 

This  signior  lunio's  giant  dwarf  don  Cupid. 

After  the  commentators  had  wearied  themselves 
with  trying  to  identify  "lunio,"  or  "Junio,"  with  one 
Junius,  a  Roman  captain  in  a  play  by  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher;  after  they  had  amended  "Junio"  to 
"Julio"  and  had  imagined  a  reference  to  Giulio 
Romano  —  someone  at  last  suggested  the  reading,  — 

This  senior-junior,  giant-dwarf,  Dan  Cupid,  — 

and  learned  and  unlearned  alike  shouted  "Shake- 
speare !" 

I  mention  in  passing  this  passion  of  Shakespeare 
for  the  antithetical.  It  is  his  habit,  a  part  of  his 
dramatic  technique,  and  it  runs  all  through  his  work. 
But  we  must  not  fix  our  attention  on  it,  or  try  to 
fathom  it ;  for  many  shimmers  of  fancy  are  at  play, 
some  of  them  small  and  silvery  as  aspen  leaves,  and 
others  as  large  as  the  shadow  cast  by  a  mainsail. 

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A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

He  sometimes  enhances  a  great  effect  of  gorgeous 
eloquence  by  placing  in  front  of  it  a  bank  of  gloomy 
foreboding  and  quiet  talk.     He  does  this  in  "Henry 
V,"  where  he  introduces  Henry's  magnificent  poetry 
about  the  responsibility  of  kings  with  a  dark,  mut- 
tering,   introspective    scene    in    prose  —  a    sort    of 
antechamber  to   Apollo's  temple.      In  "Macbeth" 
there  is  a  notable  case  of  great  blanket-work,  or 
heavy  cloud-rolling  and  premonitory  muffled  gloom, 
almost  of  stupidity.     Between  the  witch-and-mur- 
der  beginnings  of  the  play  and  the  battle-scenes  at 
the  end  of  it,  there  falls  a  long  scene  at  the  English 
court,  which  is  one  of  the  dullest  scenes  in  Shake- 
speare (Act  IV,  Sc.  3).     Malcolm  and  Macduff  are 
discovered  :  they  declare  that  they  will  seek  out  some 
desolate  shade  and  weep  their  sad  bosoms  empty. 
Both  the  characters  seem  to  be  half  asleep,  and  to  be 
talking  about  their  dreams.     Nothing  could  rest  us 
better  from  the  murders  we  have  just  been  witness- 
ing, or  better  set  off  the  turmoil  in  Scotland  that  is 
to  follow  immediately,  than  the  stupor  of  this  scene. 
It  is  idle  to  inquire  how  far  Shakespeare  was  con- 
scious of  his  lights  and  shades,  of  his  contrasted 
settings  and  antithetical  characters.     Falstaff  is  a 
fat  old  man,  the  Prince,  a  thin  young  man ;  Caliban 
balances  Ariel ;  Malvolio  is  a  prig,  Toby  Belch,  a 
scapegrace.     Such  types  appeared  to  him  in  pairs 
and  are  somehow  parts  of  each  other.     So  also  in  a 
single  character  there  are  often  contrasts  that  give 
it  brilliancy ;  for  example,  the  wisdom  of  fools,  the 
fierceness  of  the  gentle,  the  jests  of  gravediggers, 
the  pomposity  of  the  empty-minded.     It  is  always 
a  hiatus  that  makes  us  laugh  or  cry  on  the  stage. 

70 


MACBETH 

In  "Hamlet"  the  drama  arises,  as  we  have  seen,  out 
of  the  heart-piercing  emergency-calls  of  fate,  and 
Hamlet's  heartrending  incapacity  to  meet  them. 

In  "Macbeth"  the  contrasts  are  gigantic  and 
Rembrandtesque.  The  drama  is  an  old-fash- 
ioned, blood-and-thunder,  boys'  play,  and  its  merit 
lies  in  the  way  it  is  done.  The  terror  it  inspires  is 
due  to  the  abyss  that  lies  between  the  inner  natures 
of  Macbeth  and  Lady  Macbeth,  and  the  murder 
which  they  perpetrate.  Recite  the  facts  of  the  play 
as  if  done  by  the  kind  of  persons  who  usually  do  such 
deeds,  and  the  story  will  have  little  interest.  It 
would  be  a  foolish  task  for  us  to  prove  that  such  sen- 
sitive, high-keyed,  metaphysical  natures  as  Macbeth 
and  Lady  Macbeth  —  persons  who  tremble  at  shad- 
ows and  are  haunted  by  nightmares  —  seldom  com- 
mit murders  —  as  foolish  as  proving  that  the  prac- 
tical, hardened  villains  of  the  world  do  not  discourse 
wittily  and  gayly,  and  enjoy  the  drama  of  their  own 
existence  as  Richard  III  and  lago  seem  to  do.  Such 
characters  are  dramatic  devices;  and  we  must  accept 
the  hypersensitiveness  of  Macbeth  and  Lady  Mac- 
beth as  one  of  Shakespeare's  greatest  strokes  of 
genius. 

When  Macbeth  first  comes  on  the  stage,  he  is 
already  unhinged,  because  the  thought  of  murder 
has  been  flitting  through  his  head.  His  wife  and  he 
have  lived  so  long  together  that  they  are  exactly  in 
tune  with  one  another.  It  makes  no  difference 
which  of  them  first  had  the  idea  of  a  murder,  for 
together  they  make  up  the  picture  of  the  terrified 
person.  In  their  conversations  they  often  exchange 
roles,  now  one  of  them  taking  the  lead,  and  now  the 

71 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

other.  Although  it  has  been  customary  since  Mrs. 
Siddons's  time  to  regard  Lady  Macbeth  as  the  worse 
criminal  of  the  two,  there  is  really  little  to  choose 
between  them,  and  Macbeth  plots  the  murder  of 
Banquo  without  confiding  in  his  wife.  To  my  mind 
they  appear  as  a  single  dramatic  element.  Lady 
Macbeth  actually  dies  of  remorse  and  mental  trouble, 
while  Macbeth,  although  he  has  a  fighting  role  to 
distract  his  mind,  gibbers  with  metaphysical  terrors 
till  the  end.  He  identifies  the  sickness  of  Lady  Mac- 
beth with  his  own  remorse,  and  says  to  the  doctor, 
in  regard  to  Lady  Macbeth's  "thick  coming 
fancies,"  — 

Cure  her  of  that. 
Canst  thou  not  minister  to  a  mind  diseased, 
Pluck  from  the  memory  a  rooted  sorrow, 
Raze  out  the  written  troubles  of  the  brain. 
And  with  some  sweet  oblivious  antidote 
Cleanse  the  stuff'd  bosom  of  that  perilous  stuff 
Which  weighs  upon  the  heart  ? 

Even  at  his  final  meeting  with  Macduff,  he  is  ob- 
sessed by  the  witches  and  their  prophecies :  he  is 
living  the  inner  life  of  terror  and  remorse. 

Accursed  be  that  tongue  that  tells  me  so, 
For  it  hath  cow'd  my  better  part  of  man  ! 
And  be  these  juggling  fiends  no  more  believ'd, 
That  palter  with  us  in  a  double  sense; 
That  keep  the  word  of  promise  to  our  ear, 
And  break  it  to  our  hope. 

Thus,  only  two  minutes  before  he  is  killed,  Mac- 
beth is  seen  reviewing  the  story  of  their  crime,  just 
as  his  wife  reviews  that  story  in  her  sleep-walking. 

72 


MACBETH 

In  "Macbeth,"  Shakespeare  appears  to  have  doubled 
his  leading  character,  just  as  he  doubled  his  whole 
plot  in  "King  Lear." 

Let  us  glance  rapidly  through  the  play  and  recall 
its  fierce  lights  and  black  shadows,  its  plunges  from 
mood  to  mood,  from  crashing  tempest  to  ominous 
and  horrible  spots  of  calm.  The  witches  in  the  open- 
ing are  almost  pure  allegory.  Macbeth  doubts 
whether  he  has  really  seen  them  or  not,  and  we  our- 
selves see  them  as  portions  of  his  mood.  Then 
comes  Lady  Macbeth  with  the  letter,  and  we  see 
that  both  she  and  her  lord  are  in  the  coils  of  an  ob- 
session. They  are  both  frightfully  excited.  The 
look  on  Macbeth's  face  confirms  his  wife's  doubt  as 
to  his  capacity.  Both  of  them  are,  from  the  begin- 
ning, very  much  afraid  that  they  will  be  found  out. 
Murder  is  a  business  foreign  to  their  natures,  and 
they  know  that  they  will  do  it  bunglingly.  The 
unsuspecting  Duncan  and  his  train  enter  immedi- 
ately, and  a  wafture  of  aeolian  music  accompanies 
his  step  on  the  threshold  of  the  rude,  bleak,  forbid- 
ding Scotch  castle  from  which  he  is  never  to  emerge 
alive. 
Banquo.  This  guest  of  summer. 

The  temple-haunting  martlet,  does  approve 
By  his  loved  mansionry  that  the  heaven's 

breath 
Smells  wooingly  here:  no  jutty,  frieze, 
Buttress,  nor  coign  of  vantage,  but  this  bird 
Hath  made  his  pendent  bed  and  procreant 

cradle : 
Where  they  most  breed  and  haunt,  I  have 

observ'd 
The  air  is  delicate. 

78 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

Surely  this  is  a  dramatic  introduction  to  a  coarse, 
feudal,  uncomfortable,  gloomy,  and  bare-walled 
piece  of  butchery. 

I  shall  not  recite  the  murder  itself.  The  physical 
blood  and  grime  of  the  thing  is  as  awful  to  the  gentle 
natures  of  Macbeth  and  his  wife  as  is  the  horror  of 
the  crime  itself,  and  the  terror,  always  present,  of 
being  discovered. 

After  the  realism  of  the  truly  dreadful  and  most 
lifelike  scenes  between  Macbeth  and  his  wife  during 
the  murder,  they  stand  shivering,  and  ask  what 
o'clock  it  is,  and  listen  for  the  owl  and  the 
cricket. 

The  audience  at  this  point  receives  a  shock  as  of 
blank  emptiness.  Everything  has  stopped :  we  see 
the  very  boards  of  the  stage.  Then,  as  if  from 
another  world,  comes  the  knocking  of  the  porter,  — 
daylight,  —  and  the  noisy,  innocent,  leisurely  ob- 
scenity of  the  porter. 

This  plunge  from  the  imaginative  terrors  of  mid- 
night into  the  cruel  facts  of  common  day  is  perhaps 
the  most  sudden  transition  in  drama.  It  is  the  day- 
light that  makes  the  murder  so  ghastly  in  review ; 
and  it  is  the  natural  goodness  of  Macbeth  and  of  his 
lady,  their  domestic  quality,  their  spiritual  remote- 
ness from  the  thing  in  hand,  that  makes  us  shudder. 

Of  all  the  horror-breeding  passages  in  the  drama, 
the  most  telling  are  the  two  speeches  that  give  us  a 
glimpse  into  Macbeth  as  a  poetic,  introspective,  soul- 
ful person.  At  the  very  moment  when  he  is  encour- 
aging himself  and  lashing  himself  up  to  be  as  bloody 
as  possible  there  comes  to  him  a  vision  of  the  quiet 
life. 

7i 


MACBETH 

We  have  scotch'd  the  snake,  not  kill'd  it : 
She  '11  close  and  be  herself. 

Better  be  with  the  dead, 
Whom  we,  to  gain  our  peace,  have  sent  to  peace, 
Than  on  the  torture  of  the  mind  to  lie 
In  restless  ecstasy.    Duncan  is  in  his  grave; 
After  life's  fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well ; 
Treason  has  done  his  worst :  nor  steel,  nor  poison, 
Malice  domestic,  foreign  levy,  nothing. 
Can  touch  him  further. 

Again  when  the  servant  announces  that  the  Eng- 
lish forces  are  upon  him,  Macbeth  is  seized  with  an 
access  of  sentiment  —  a  vision  of  lost  happiness. 

Servant.      The  English  force,  so  please  you. 

Macbeth.    Take  thy  face  hence. 

Seyton  !  —  I  am  sick  at  heart. 
When  I  behold  —  Seyton,  I  say  !  —  This  push 
Will  cheer  me  ever,  or  disseat  me  now. 
I  have  liv'd  long  enough  :  my  way  of  life 
Is  fall'n  into  the  sere,  the  yellow  leaf, 
And  that  which  should  accompany  old  age. 
As  honor,  love,  obedience,  troops  of  friends, 
I  must  not  look  to  have;  but,  in  their  stead. 
Curses,    not    loud    but    deep,    mouth-honor, 

breath, 
Which  the  poor  heart  would  fain  deny,  and 

dare  not, 
Seyton ! 

To  no  other  dramatist  but  Shakespeare  did  nature 
reveal  these  climaxes  of  antiphonal  feeling  —  a  devil 
rushing  in  where  a  god  is  cai.ed,  or  vice  versa. 


XI 


THE  COMEDIES 

In  the  days  when  the  Germans  were  marching  on 
Paris,  and  from  time  to  time  thereafter,  whenever 
there  seemed  to  be  a  chance  that  the  Germans  might 
win  the  war,  I  was  haunted  by  momentary  visions 
of  the  past,  —  that  part  of  the  past  whose  spirit  was 
threatened,  —  the  spirit  of  joy,  relaxation,  and 
dreamy  happiness.  I  saw,  as  in  a  flash,  Falstaflf 
sitting  on  the  tavern  bench  in  the  sun  and  unbut- 
toning his  belt  after  dinner,  Toby  Belch  going  to 
burn  more  sack  and  swearing  it  was  not  late  yet.  I 
heard  Bottom  calling  for  an  almanac,  and  boasting 
that  he  would  do  it  in  'Ercles'  vein,  Audrey  asking 
Touchstone,  "  What  is  honest  ?  Is  it  a  good  thing  ? " 
and  Grumio  describing  his  master's  wedding-journey 
with  the  Shrew. 

Such  scenes  from  Shakespeare,  and  fragmentary 
memories  of  the  man  himself  and  of  his  age,  would 
pass  by  in  my  mind  as  if  they  were  the  thing  attacked 
by  this  whole  German  onslaught :  and,  indeed,  they 
were  the  citadel ;  they,  to  the  German  mind,  were  the 
enemy  that  must  be  razed  out  of  the  world's  life  if 
Kaiserdom  were  to  exist  at  all.  There  was,  of  course, 
always  a  possibility  that  the  Germans  would  win,  and 
that  an  era  of  darkness  and  violence  would  follow 
which  should  make  the  little  English  paradise  of  free- 
dom, out  of  which  Shakespeare's  comedies  had  risen, 
seem  even  more  of  a  miracle  than  it  had  seemed  before. 

76 


THE  COMEDIES 

This  war-experience  gave  me  a  new  clue  to  English 
literature.  A  sense  of  personal  safety  is  one  of  the 
elements  that  is  felt  all  through  English  letters.  It 
Is  the  climate  in  which  the  English  genius,  which  is 
the  genius  for  happiness,  developed.  How  similar 
in  spirit  is  all  the  joyous  part  of  English  fiction,  from 
Chaucer  to  Surtees's  sporting  books !  There  is  the 
same  glow  in  "Twelfth  Night "  that  there  is  in  " Pick- 
wick Papers."  The  rapture  of  mere  existence  is  in 
all  this  work.  It  has  been  made  without  intention. 
Intention  is  a  damage  to  it,  as  we  see  often  in  Dickens, 
and  always  in  George  Eliot ;  and  the  substratum  of 
it  is  common  life,  good-humor,  observation,  courage, 
an  indeterminate  way  of  living,  and  an  abundance  of 
force.  The  English  write  as  they  live  —  in  the 
moment. 

The  earlier  British  humorists  set  the  pace  for  the 
later  ones ;  and,  as  it  happened,  the  social  system  of 
England  changed  so  little  during  eight  centuries,  and 
so  much  of  the  Middle  Ages  survived  in  it,  that  the 
types  and  situations,  the  high  life  and  the  low  life  of 
the  land,  the  nobles  and  the  ostlers,  the  Hotspurs, 
Dogberrys,  grooms,  murderers,  and  Sam  Wellers 
have  afforded  a  continuous  family  of  picturesque 
characters  and  grotesque  contrasts,  which  have  been 
reflected  in  the  humorous  fiction  of  each  new  age, 
under  the  guidance  of  tradition,  and  by  the  light  of 
the  great  masters  of  the  earlier  times. 

Ever  since  Shakespeare's  day,  his  hand  is  to  be 
seen  everywhere  in  the  fiction  and  humor  of  England. 
It  is  in  Fielding,  in  Smollett  and  Scott;  in  Dickens, 
Thackeray,  and  Trollope.  They  are  gay  people,  the 
English,  and  except  when  they  try  to  be  clever,  are 

77 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

the  cleverest  people  in  the  world.  Ebulliency,  en- 
thusiasm, and  the  absence  of  literary  pose  are  the 
great  features  of  English  literature.  If  you  cast 
your  eye  over  the  whole  panorama,  the  low  life  in  it 
appears  to  be  better  done  than  the  high  life.  The 
reason  of  this  may  be  that  great  writers  are  almost 
always  men  of  the  people ;  and,  as  they  thoroughly 
know  the  people,  they  describe  them  to  the  life ;  but 
they  make  guesses  as  to  the  aristocracy. 

In  Shakespeare,  both  the  high  life  and  the  low  life 
are  equally  convincing  when  we  read  the  plays  to 
ourselves;  but  on  the  modern  stage  a  very  strange 
thing  happens :  the  low  comedy  is  apt  to  be  heavy 
and  conscientious.  It  may  be  that  the  Puritan 
Revolution  made  such  a  break  in  the  old  Gothic 
horse-play  and  comic  tradition,  that  the  art  of  it  was 
lost.  These  thoughts  occurred  to  me  while  watch- 
ing a  rather  second-rate  performance  of  "Twelfth 
Night"  in  French.  It  was  an  absurd  exhibition  in 
some  ways.  The  costumes  were  burlesque ;  Mal- 
volio  was  schematized,  understood  and  presented  as 
a  serious  type,  the  part  being  acted  so  conscien- 
tiously that  Malvolio  became  a  bore.  On  the  other 
hand  the  buffoonery  was  gay.  I  was  su  -prised  to  see 
gay  buffoonery  in  a  Shakespearean  performance ;  and 
quite  suddenly  it  occurred  to  me  that  this  was  right, 
this  was  the  way  that  Shakespeare's  droll  parts 
should  be  played.  There  is  a  technique  about 
buffoonery,  and  the  clowns  of  Moliere,  in  whose 
antics  the  old  mediaeval  tomfoolery  has  come  down 
to  us,  throw  light  on  Shakespeare's  low  comedy. 

As  for  high  comedy,  Garrick  used  to  say  that  in 
tragedy  he  could  always  bring  down  the  house,  no 

78 


THE  COMEDIES 

matter  in  what  mood  he  stepped  upon  the  boards, 
whether  he  had  a  headache  or  felt  sick  or  indifferent. 
"  But  comedy  —  comedy  is  a  serious  business  ! "  This 
is  no  doubt  a  universal  experience  with  actors ;  and 
Shakespeare's  comedies,  each  of  which  is  so  different 
in  spirit,  in  tempo,  in  coloring  from  the  rest,  are  prob- 
ably the  most  difficult  of  all  comedies  to  act  well. 
"As  You  Like  It,"  for  instance,  is  a  water-color 
sketch  —  there    is   little    drama   in    it.      Rosalind's 
repartees    cannot    be    gilded.     Touchstone's    solilo- 
quies will  not  bear  a  frame.     The  set  speeches  in 
"As  You  Like  It"  —  as  for  instance,  "Now,  my 
co-mates  and  brothers-in-exile,"  or  Oliver's  two  long 
speeches    describing   how    he    was    rescued    by   his 
brothers  from  the  sucked  and  hungry  lioness  —  can- 
not be  informed  with  passion ;  and  yet  they  must  be 
beautiful.     They  say   that   Mozart's   music   is   the 
most  difficult  of  all  music  to  play  —  it  is  so  perfect 
and  yet  so  delicate.     You  must  live  yourself  back 
into  the  world  as  it  was  before  the  French  Revolu- 
tion if  you  would  play  Mozart  correctly.     No  one 
has  the  time  to  do  this,  and  therefore  Mozart  cannot 
be   played.      In   like   manner,  "As  You  Like   It" 
is  apt  to  drag.      We  have  all  become  heavy-fisted 
nowadays,  and  we  pound  our  texts.     Where  poetry, 
foolery,  and  philosophy  meet,  as  they  do  in  these 
sylvan  scenes,  —  all  of  them   tinged  with  a  world 
that  has  long  ago  disappeared,  —  we  are  like  bur- 
glars dancing  a  minuet.     Perhaps,  instead  of  bewail- 
ing the  vanishment  of  the  old  English  stage,  we  ought 
rather   to   wonder   at   the   genius   of  Shakespeare, 
which  has  so  long  kept  alive  the  art  of  imaginative, 
happy  badinage,  during  a  century  whose  social  life 

79 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

has  been  growing  ever  more  and  more  unimaginative, 
graceless,  and  practical. 

In  giving  one  of  the  lesser  comedies,  the  mood  of 
the  piece  is  harder  to  find,  and  its  keynote  harder 
to  sound,  than  in  the  great  ones.  The  "Merchant 
of  Venice"  expounds  itself  like  a  tragedy,  and  is  so 
various,  interesting,  and  full  of  passion  that  it  is 
easy  to  act.  The  lighter  plays  present  the  heavier 
problems.  In  "Much  Ado  About  Nothing"  the 
plot  is  more  serious  and  the  whole  humor  and  in- 
trigue of  the  piece  more  sprightly  than  in  "As  You 
Like  It."  How  shall  we  find,  how  hit  upon  that 
talisman,  that  "Open,  Sesame,"  which  shall  show 
the  inner  life  of  each  of  these  delicate  masterpieces  ? 
The  plays  themselves  must  teach  us.  They  were 
not  created,  nor  have  they  been  sustained,  by  any 
academy.  We  have  only  tradition,  personal  feeling, 
and  experience  to  guide  us. 

The  "Taming  of  the  Shrew"  has  still  another, 
and  very  different,  temperament  of  its  own.  It  is  a 
very  subtle,  quizzical,  humane,  philosophic  piece  of 
nonsense.  In  the  "Midsummer  Night's  Dream" 
you  have,  again,  a  region  of  fancy  so  utterly  different 
from  all  these  last-mentioned  plays,  that  it  seems  as 
if  it  must  have  been  made  by  another  hand.  It  is 
steeped  in  the  peculiar  atmosphere  of  the  world's 
fairyland,  and  seems  to  be  a  whole  literature  in 
itself.  "Twelfth  Night"  is,  again,  a  new  universe. 
It  is  the  best  light  comedy  in  the  world  and  swims 
like  a  ruddy  planet,  bearing  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Golden  Age.  It  is  a  saturnalia  of  good  feeling, 
leisure,  wit,  and  amusement  in  which  both  high  and 
low  revel  by  day  and  night.     Each  of  these  comedies 

80 


THE  COMEDIES 

is  a  unity,  and  resounds  harmoniously  when  its 
chords  are  touched;  but  the  works  must  not  be  at- 
tacked with  vigor,  and  the  keynotes  of  them  must 
be  rather  Hstened  for  and  imagined  than  struck. 

Perhaps  the  sophisticated  modern  person  can 
best  approach  Shakespeare's  comedies  by  thinking 
of  them  as  child's  plays,  things  beneath  his  serious 
notice  and  therefore  to  be  humored.  Otherwise  the 
casket  scene  in  the  "Merchant  of  Venice"  will  dis- 
gust him.  It  is,  indeed,  probable  that  the  folk-lore 
and  fairy  tales  of  the  world  are  kept  alive  by  the 
infant  population  of  the  world,  and  that  no  man, 
who  first  discovers  these  things  after  he  is  grown  up, 
will  be  apt  to  find  much  meaning  in  them.  The 
ancients  lived  on  nursery  tales ;  but  every  man,  even 
then,  had  learned  these  tales  first  in  the  nursery.  And 
I  suspect  that  to-day,  if  the  myths  and  auld  wives' 
stories  should  die  out  of  our  nurseries,  they  would  die 
out  altogether ;  and  then,  of  course,  there  would  be 
nothing  for  the  learned  to  talk  about  except  politics, 
economics,  eugenics,  and  ethnology  —  subjects  which 
deal  with  mankind  in  masses,  and  take  the  individual 
for  granted.  To  the  poet  there  are  no  Masses,  but 
only  men.  He  speaks  to  each  one  of  us  severally. 
The  poets  throw  open  the  windows  and  let  in  cur- 
rents that  carry  life,  awaken  energy,  and  make  men 
sensitive,  powerful,  wise,  eloquent,  capable  of  seeing 
the  world,  —  I  will  not  say  as  it  is,  for  no  man  has 
seen  that,  —  but  more  nearly  as  it  is  than  men  ever 
can  see  it  without  the  light  of  poetry. 


XII 

SHAKESPEARE'S  TYPES 

Shakespeare's  gentleness  toward  the  evil  In  hu- 
man nature  is  his  rarest  quality.  We  seem  to  find 
in  every  line  of  him  a  sentiment  which  he  has  put, 
strangely  enough,  in  the  mouth  of  Henry  V. 

There  is  a  soul  of  goodness  in  things  evil 
Would  men  observingly  distill  it  out. 

He  can  hardly  bear  to  draw  a  villain.  In  some 
cases,  where  the  plot  calls  for  a  villain,  as  in  "Ham- 
let," "The  Tempest,"  or  the  "Merchant  of  Venice," 
—  cases  in  which  any  other  playwright  would  have 
given  us  wickedness,  —  Shakespeare  draws  a  weak 
or  unfortunate  character.  In  "Hamlet"  the  wicked 
King  is  half  repentant.  In  the  "Merchant  of  Ven- 
ice" Shylock  is  a  much-injured  and  very  human 
person.  In  the  "Tempest"  Caliban  is  convincingly 
good  and  unconvincingly  bad,  a  rudimentary  half- 
soul.  Prospero,  to  be  sure,  considers  the  creature 
ungrateful ;  but  we  do  not  think  him  ungrateful,  we 
think  of  him  as  a  creature  who  has  never  had  half  a 
chance,  and  we  almost  love  him. 

In  "Romeo  and  Juliet"  Shakespeare  manages  to 
get  on  without  a  villain.  In  "As  You  Like  It"  we 
have,  as  the  bad  man  in  the  piece,  a  faint,  obliter- 
ated personality,  Orlando's  elder  brother,  and  we 
have  also  the  usurping  Duke :  both  of  them  should, 
of  course;  be  villains ;  but  they  both  repent,  and  were 

82 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TYPES 

never  truly  bad  anyway.     In   "Much  Ado  About 
Nothing"  there  is  a  Don  John,  who  is  a  mild  dis- 
contented bastard  —  not  a  bad  fellow,  but  a  failure, 
and  one  who  feels  that  he  is  down  and  out.    Shake- 
speare thinks  that  men  in  this  situation  become  vil- 
lains, to  ease  their  minds.     When  Don  John  is  told 
by  a  pal  about  the  intended  marriage  of  Hero,  he 
says,  "Will  it  serve  for  any  model  to  build  mischief 
on  ?"  and  proceeds  to  make  much  ado.     It  amounts 
almost  to  trifling  with  an  audience,  to  pass  off  such  a 
duffer  as  Don  John  for  a  villain.     In  "Measure  for 
Measure"  there  was  a  chance  for  a  really  bad  man 
in  the  wicked  old  judge,  Angelo,  who  proposes  the 
infamous  bargain  to  Isabella  by  which  her  brother 
is  to  be  released.     But  Angelo  is  a  lay  figure  :  he  has 
no  reality.     Shakespeare  does  n't  even  try  to  make 
Angelo's  passion  real,  and  perhaps  he  could  n't  have 
made  it  convincing;    because    Shakespeare  didn't 
understand    bad    people.     In    the    early    poem    of 
"Lucrece"  his  treatment  of  Tarquin  foreshadows  his 
later  treatment  of  Macbeth;  for  Tarquin  is  repre- 
sented as  a  highly  sensitive  and  metaphysical  person 
who,  before  his  deed,  is  horrified  at  the  thought  of  it, 
and  the  instant  he  has  done  the  deed,  sounds  the 
doom  against  himself. 

In  a  general  way  it  may  be  said  that  Shakespeare's 
villains  are  either  sympathetically  presented  as  men 
with  much  good  in  them,  or  else  they  are,  not  gods 
out  of  a  machine,  but  devils  out  of  a  machine  —  toys 
of  stage-land. 

The  only  characters  I  can  think  of  in  Shakespeare 
who  give  one  a  shudder  as  being  both  very  wicked 
and  very  real,  are  Goneril  and  Regan ;  and  they  are 

89 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

women.  It  seems  to  be  a  fact  in  nature  that  women 
may  be  saints  or  may  be  demons,  but  that  men  are 
on  the  whole  good-hearted,  fumbHng,  stumbHng 
creatures,  never  perfect,  and  never  entirely  bad.  A 
woman  may  be  entirely  wicked;  and  if  lago's  role 
had  been  cast  for  a  feminine  part,  we  should  have 
had  the  most  terrific  thing  in  literature. 

Shakespeare  reserves  all  his  adoration  for  his 
heroines.  His  good  women  are  angelic  beings. 
His  young  heroines,  Miranda,  Cordelia,  Imogen, 
Juliet,  Perdita  seem  all  to  be  spirits  of  the  same 
heaven,  and  are  like  different  aspects  of  the  same 
woman  rather  than  different  women  :  they  are  the 
quintessence  of  romanticism.  His  heroines  of  ma- 
ture years,  as  for  instance,  Hermione  (in  "A  Winter's 
Tale"),  and  Queen  Katherine,  have  the  same  qual- 
ity. He  cannot  refrain  from  throwing  a  dash  of 
connubial  romance  into  Cleopatra. 

He  uses  his  men  as  foils  to  set  off  his  heroines. 
But  alas  for  the  men  !  He  can  no  more  draw  a  hero, 
than  he  can  draw  a  villain.  Romeo,  Hamlet,  Or- 
lando, Ferdinand  (in  the  "Tempest"),  Posthumus 
(in  "Cymbeline"),  Claudio  (in  "Much  Ado"), 
Bertram  (in  "All's  Well"),  Claudio  (in  "Measure 
for  Measure")  —  what  an  array  of  unheroic  youths  ! 
Shakespeare  produces  good  stupid  men  at  will  — 
Horatio  (in  "Hamlet"),  Antonio  (in  the  "Mer- 
chant of  Venice"),  Brutus,  Coriolanus,  Malcolm  (in 
"Macbeth").  They  are  foils  to  the  women.  Thus 
it  would  appear  that  the  greatest  dramatist  of  the 
world  has  not  drawn  a  single  satisfactory  hero. 
The  nearest  Shakespeare  comes  to  a  hero  is  in  Julius 
Caesar,  whose  few  cues  somehow  give  us  a  tremen- 

84 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TYPES 

dous  impression  of  the  heroic.  Had  it  been  necessary 
for  dramatic  effect,  Shakespeare  would  have  given 
us  heroes;  but  his  mind  ran  on  pathetic  climaxes, 
which  are  the  making  of  heroines  and  the  marring  of 
heroes. 

Another  consequence  of  Shakespeare's  natal  be- 
nignity was  that  he  could  not  be  cynical.  Now  and 
then  he  has  occasion  to  try.  The  plot  of  the  "Tam- 
ing of  the  Shrew"  gave  him  an  opportunity  for 
cynicism ;  but  Shakespeare  burlies  it  over  into  good- 
humor  :  he  keeps  the  plot  farcical,  boisterous,  and 
fanciful.  Petruchio  is  a  sound-hearted  man,  and  is 
really  very  fond  of  Katherine. 

On  several  occasions,  however,  Shakespeare  tried 
to  write  a  really  cynical  play,  and  in  such  cases  he 
always  produced  a  bad  play.  For  instance,  a  true 
cynic  would  have  written  a  good  play  about  Timon 
or  Troilus.  Shakespeare  did  not  know  that  pessi- 
mism constitutes  a  field  of  art  by  itself.  Pessimism 
is  not  a  mood  that  a  man  can  drop  into,  and  then 
do  something  clever,  which  will  compete  with  the 
work  of  the  professionals.  Pessimism  is  a  serious 
business :  to  be  a  good  pessimist  requires  lifelong 
study.  A  man  must  have  been  morbid  in  his  youth, 
sick  perhaps,  unjustly  thwarted,  clever,  and  mis- 
understood. He  must,  before  reaching  the  age  of 
seventeen,  have  cried  out,  "Darkness  be  thou  my 
light!"  and  proceeded  to  live  in  shadows,  to  luxuri- 
ate in  depression  and  despair. 

The  greatest  pessimist  who  ever  lived  was  Leo- 
pardi,  who  complained  that  the  reading  of  Byron 
destroyed  his  gift.  It  appears  that  Byron  was  such 
a   milk-and-water    fellow   compared   to   him,    that 

85 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

Leopardi  felt  his  divine  powers  of  pessimism  (z7  mio 
pessimismo)  desert  him  when  he  read  the  verses  of 
the  pseudo-pessimist :  he  could  not  even  get  up  a 
good  fit  of  rancor  in  which  to  denounce  the  impostor. 

We  must  agree  that  Byron,  in  spite  of  his  early 
training,  is  an  amateur  pessimist  compared  to  the 
continental  practitioners.  The  English  are  too 
cheery,  too  healthy,  and  live  too  much  in  the  open 
air,  to  be  true  pessimists.  And  Shakespeare  was 
the  most  cheery,  healthy,  and  open-air  Englishman 
of  them  all.  Such  a  man  would  never  even  have 
dreamed  of  writing  up  a  cynical  theme,  unless  he 
happened  to  be  out  of  sorts,  sick  perhaps,  cross,  or 
not  himself.  And  Shakespeare,  with  all  the  genius 
and  all  the  sincere,  passionate  acrimony  which  he 
displays  in  "Timon"  and  in  "Troilus,"  has  done  no 
more  than  exhibit  the  nervous  depression  of  an 
optimist  —  a  sort  of  peevishness,  very  different 
from  the  logic,  the  cruelty,  and  the  perverse  beauty 
of  true  cynicism. 

Let  us  lay  aside  speculation  and  open  the  plays  at 
random.  Shylock,  Hotspur,  Falstaff,  Mercutio, 
Polonius,  Caliban,  Bottom,  Petruchio,  Toby  Belch, 
have  the  grotesque,  homely  vitality  of  mediaeval  art. 
How  did  these  characters  come  into  being  ^  They 
start  from  their  frames,  and  seem  to  exist  apart  from 
their  context.  Yet  it  is  to  the  context  that  they 
owe  their  existence.  In  Shakespeare's  non-dramatic 
poetry  you  do  not  find  any  trace  of  this  peculiar 
power  to  draw  character.  In  his  Sonnets  and  poems 
he  gives  no  inkling  that  such  figures  would  come  at 
his  call  from  the  abysses  of  his  imagination.  It  was 
the  pressure  of  drama  that  evoked  them.      In  the 

86 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TYPES 

Sonnets  we  see  Shakespeare  as  a  perfectly  charming 
and  rather  helpless  person,  with  an  extreme  and  even 
angelic  sweetness  of  disposition,  musical  rather  than 
witty,  and  at  moments  as  a  half-godlike  Orpheus  in 
his  gift  of  song.  The  "Lucrece"  and  the  "Venus 
and  Adonis"  reveal  him  as  an  amazingly  talented, 
luxurious,  and  somewhat  artificial  court  poet.  They 
are  decorations  for  a  Borgia  palace.  The  influence  of 
patronage  is  to  be  felt  in  the  two  longer  poems ;  and  if 
Shakespeare  had  been  born  ten  years  earlier,  and  had 
come  up  to  London  at  the  time  when  the  stage  was 
not  in  condition  to  absorb  his  dramatic  talents,  he 
would  have  written  metrical  romances  that  would 
have  out-Spensered  Spenser.  We  should  have  had 
more  court  fairylands.  But  once  in  harness  at  the 
theatre,  a  kind  of  good  sense,  or  indifference,  or  love 
of  his  freedom,  kept  him  at  his  treadmill  of  play- 
writing.  It  turned  out  that  he  could  write,  or  learned 
to  write,  any  kind  of  poetry  that  a  situation  called  for. 
His  characters  are  by-products  —  as  it  were,  dis- 
coveries. He  puts  the  story  into  the  crucible  of  his 
mind  and  the  characters  are  the  result.  The  "Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor"  is  a  play  not  founded  on  a  tale  or 
a  piece  of  history  that  touched  Shakespeare's  fancy ; 
but  is  a  thing  manufactured  to  order;  therefore  it 
contains  no  Dogberry,  no  Toby  Belch,  no  Touch- 
stone. Unless  Shakespeare's  interest  was  excited  by  a 
story,  his  powers  were  not  awakened. 

It  is  very  remarkable  that  Shakespeare  never  de- 
veloped a  consistent  technique,  but  to  the  end  of  his 
life  was  always  at  the  mercy  of  his  theme.  "Romeo 
and  Juliet"  is  one  of  the  earliest  of  his  plays  and  one 
of  the  best.     His  greatest  tragedies  were  written  in 

87 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

alternate  years  with  his  very  worst  plays.  All  the 
scholars,  though  they  differ  as  to  detail,  agree  in 
placing  "Julius  Caesar,"  "Hamlet,"  "Othello," 
"Macbeth,"  "King  Lear"  in  the  first  decade  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  in  sandwiching  between 
these  masterpieces  the  atrocious  plays  of  "Troilus 
and  Cressida,"  "Measure  for  Measure,"  "Timon  of 
Athens,"  and  "Pericles."  Is  there  another  example 
of  a  very  great  artist  who  did  his  best  and  his  worst 
work  during  the  same  decade  ?  I  do  not  know  how 
to  explain  the  matter,  except  by  imagining  that 
Shakespeare's  instinct  in  the  choice  of  tragic  themes 
was  unreliable.  That  he  was  in  a  tragic  mood 
during  the  period  in  question  is  indubitable;  but  it 
seems  to  have  been  an  accident  with  him  whether 
he  hit  upon  a  theme  that  was  suitable  to  his  genius 
or  not.  If  he  happened  to  choose  a  bad  theme,  it 
ruined  his  play ;  for  he  had  no  conventional  dramatic 
practices  with  which  to  sustain  the  piece. 

If  we  have  regard  merely  to  Shakespeare's  literary 
vehicle,  we  can  see  that  his  verse,  his  language  and 
turns  of  thought,  his  metaphors  and  his  music,  show 
a  consistent  development  from  the  beginning  to  the 
end  of  his  life.  His  speech  bewrayeth  him.  His  form 
of  thought  becomes  ever  more  rapid  and  elliptical ; 
and  the  critics  have  had  recourse  to  metrical  theo- 
ries in  their  attempts  to  date  the  plays.  But  we  have 
no  clue  to  Shakespeare's  progress  in  that  art  which 
makes  him  Shakespeare :  his  dramatic  craft  seems 
like  a  series  of  miracles  done  upon  a  background  of 
chaos.  This  lack  of  conventions  was  part  and  parcel 
of  Shakespeare's  age.  The  Elizabethan  stage  was  a 
field  upon  which  poets  tried  experiments  in  playwrit- 

88 


SHAKESPEARE'S  TYPES 

ing.  There  was  no  school  of  drama.  If  a  man  failed, 
he  tried  something  new.  This  system  produced  both 
the  greatest  and  the  worst  dramas  in  the  world,  and 
apparently  Shakespeare  wrote  both  kinds  almost 
simultaneously. 


XIII 

THE  SONNETS 

Education  sets  spectacles  before  men's  eyes. 
Each  one  sees  what  his  learning  and  his  avocations 
have  taught  him  to  look  for;  and  thus  the  landscape 
of  life  resolves  itself  into  a  map.  No  two  of  these 
maps  are  exactly  alike :  your  architect,  your  farmer, 
a  university  man,  a  theological  student,  a  bank  clerk 
—  it  is  the  early  training  of  each  that  colors  the 
world  for  him.  He  is  seldom  aware  of  this ;  for  a  man 
no  more  sees  his  own  education  than  a  man  can  see 
his  own  spectacles.  It  is  the  same  with  the  fine  arts. 
What  are  they  but  metaphysical  lenses,  a  mental 
table  on  which  men  arrange  their  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings, bending  over  their  poem,  their  plot,  their  pic- 
ture, till  the  task  absorbs  their  mind,  and  the  work 
of  art  they  leave  behind  teaches  us  to  see  what  they 
saw,  feel  what  they  felt,  be  what  they  were  ? 

The  amateurs,  and  those  who  dabble  in  poetry, 
philosophy,  or  painting,  think  that  these  arts  are 
clever  games,  played  with  bits  and  fragments  of  ex- 
perience. But  to  the  artist  and  the  poet  the  games 
are  life  itself.  Their  palettes  and  brushes,  their 
majors  and  minors  are  parts  of  a  harness  which 
their  souls  have  somehow  slipped  into,  and  by  means 
of  which  their  lives  and  experiences  are  mysteriously 
transmuted  into  poetry,  plays,  pictures,  and  so  on. 

Although  no  one  knows  how  Shakespeare  was  em- 
ployed between  the  ages  of  twenty  and  twenty-eight, 

90 


THE  SONNETS 

when  he  emerged  as  an  actor  and  dramatist,  it  would 
seem  that  the  playhouse  was  his  university.  He 
was  dipped  in  the  theatrical  business  at  so  early  an 
age  that  its  conventions  formed  and  controlled  his 
thought.  All  the  modern  playwrights  except  Shake- 
speare have  something  else  in  their  minds  besides 
drama.  They  have  opinions,  prejudices,  intentions 
—  a  training  and  a  private  life  outside  of  their  craft. 
If,  for  instance,  a  modern  dramatist  reads  Aristotle's 
"Ethics,"  he  thinks  about  Aristotle  and  about 
ethics ;  but  if  Shakespeare  reads  Aristotle's  "  Ethics," 
he  sees  both  Aristotle  and  Ethics  dancing  in  his  mind 
as  part  of  a  puppet-show  that  never  ends.  In  the 
flush  of  his  youth  he  entered  the  Cavern  of  Drama, 
where  is  enacted  the  eternal  mystery  play  of  human 
life.  None  of  the  creatures  of  the  mystery  play  are 
persons,  but  resonances,  realms  of  feeling,  diapasons 
of  the  spirit.  They  are  musical  antiphonies  which, 
when  sounded  properly,  evoke  that  unity  within  us 
which  responds  only  to  the  counter-strokes  of  mighty 
opposites. 

Young  Shakespeare  stepped  into  this  cavern  and 
was  never  heard  of  again.  The  stage  became  his 
education ;  the  drama  was  his  life.  We  are  puzzled 
by  this  —  we  who  have  been  taught  to  see  life  as 
politics,  religion,  or  morality;  as  conduct,  or  eco- 
nomics. We  insist  that  there  must  have  been  some 
part  of  Shakespeare  that  we  could  meet  outside  his 
playhouse ;  and  we  almost  resent  the  fact  that  he  has 
no  private  opinions,  and  ask  petulantly,  "What  did 
the  man  do  for  the  rest  of  the  day  after  his  play- 
writing  was  finished?"  Well,  he  staged-managed 
a  theatre,  acted  in  plays,  and  went  to  the  tavern  to 

91 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

meet  his  friends.  That  is  all  that  we  positively 
know  about  him.  Between  the  cavern  and  the 
tavern  Shakespeare  was  content.  He  belonged  to 
that  class  of  artists  who  live  for  their  work,  like 
Mozart,  Turner,  Rembrandt,  or  Blake;  and  as  his 
work  was  from  the  start  very  much  appreciated,  and 
he  was,  moreover,  of  a  most  happy  disposition,  he  had 
no  temptation  to  fume  and  worry,  to  wonder  whether 
it  was  good,  to  struggle  and  suffer  and  write  letters, 
and  in  one  way  or  another  to  expose  his  own  rela- 
tion to  his  art.  If  he  had  any  feelings  about  himself 
and  his  work,  he  worked  them  off,  as  he  did  the  rest 
of  his  thoughts,  in  depicting  stage  characters. 

That  Shakespeare  excited  so  little  notice  while  he 
lived,  and  left  so  few  personal  records  behind  him, 
is  indeed  puzzling;  but  then  we  have  no  one  with 
whom  to  compare  him.  Perhaps  men  like  Shake- 
speare always  live  and  die  unnoticed.  If  a  single 
specimen  of  a  new  insect  should  be  found,  and  if  its 
chrysalis  should  turn  into  a  butterfly  leaving  no  shell 
behind,  we  should  be  astonished  at  the  rarity  of  the 
species ;  but  we  should  not  cry  out  that  the  absorp- 
tion of  the  shell  was  a  miracle.  Shakespeare's  men- 
tal grasp,  facility,  and  learning  so  amaze  us  that  he 
seems  like  a  creature  from  another  planet ;  and  yet 
we  are  forced  to  judge  him  by  our  own.  His  dramas 
throw  no  direct  light  on  his  life ;  nor  do  the  two  roman- 
tic poems,  "Venus  and  Adonis"  and  "Lucrece,"  for 
these  poems  are  obviously  pieces  of  formal  art. 
Therefore  the  famished  curiosity  of  the  world  has 
fixed  itself  upon  his  Sonnets. 

A  convention  of  heavy-footed  critics,  with  shovels 
on  their  shoulders  and  cans  of  dynamite  at  their 

92 


THE  SONNETS 

elbows,  have  been  encamped  about  Shakespeare's 
Sonnets  for  a  century.  They  feel  that  they  are 
about  to  excavate  Shakespeare,  and  set  him  up 
definitively  in  their  museum.  They  think  that,  if 
they  but  knew  the  facts  of  his  life,  and  the  identity 
of  W.  H.,  to  whom  the  Sonnets  are  dedicated,  they 
would  pluck  out  the  heart  of  his  mystery  and  write 
their  names  on  his  tomb.  But  the  mystery  of  the 
Sonnets  is  a  mystery  that  can  be  delved  into  only 
by  imaginative  perceptions  which  are  apt  to  be 
blunted  by  learning.  The  study  of  documents  hurts 
the  eyesight. 

The  sonnet-form  is  a  humorous  opal,  which  hides  or 
discloses  its  lights  according  to  the  sky  and  the 
weather,  and  turns  to  trash  in  a  museum.  It  has  a 
history  that  is  knitted  into  the  social  life  of  Europe  for 
six  centuries;  and  the  customs  and  costumes  of  Italy, 
France,  and  England  are  reflected  in  its  hues.  It 
forms  a  class  of  literature  by  itself:  for  the  sonnet  is 
not  written  to  be  printed,  but  to  be  shown  in  manu- 
script to  one's  friends  as  a  social  amenity.  To  pub- 
lish sonnets  is  a  pompous  and  academic  thing  to  do, 
and  is  like  handing  about  dead  butterflies  in  a  box. 
Petrarch  established  the  practice,  and  thereby  did 
much  harm  to  the  art.  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  were 
not  meant  to  be  printed,  and  are  thus  true  and  lively 
creatures.  Neither  were  they  holy  and  intimate  con- 
fessions, consigned  to  the  drawers  of  a  secret  cabinet 
and  found  after  his  death  by  a  friend.  They  were 
written  from  time  to  time  during  three  years,  and 
at  a  period  when  a  sonnet-craze  reigned  among  the 
literati  of  England,  having  been  brought  in  from 
France  in  the  wake  of  Renaissance  influences. 

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A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

The  sonnet  throughout  its  history  had  remained  a 
highly  specialized  type  of  literary  performance,  con- 
ventional, candied,  and  dealing  with  conceits  which 
had  become  common  property.  The  vast  authority 
of  Petrarch  controlled  its  form  and  substance  for 
two  centuries  before  Shakespeare's  time,  and  the 
Elizabethan  sonnets  are  imitative  to  a  degree  that 
was  unsuspected  till  the  scholars  exposed  the  facts. 
What  would  have  been  thought  plagiarism  and 
theft  in  any  other  form  of  poetry  was  deemed  cor- 
rectness in  the  sonnet.  The  whole  art  and  craft  of 
sonnet-making  was  governed  by  ideas  of  the  super- 
sensuous  which  are  vaguely  attributed  to  the  influ- 
ence of  Plato.  The  verses  lived  in  a  planetary 
region,  above  the  touch  of  earthly  passion,  and  the 
women  to  whom  sonnets  were  written  became  meta- 
physical stalking-horses  for  the  poets.  Dante  was 
not  in  love  with  Beatrice  in  any  ordinary  sense  of 
the  word,  nor  Petrarch  with  Laura,  nor  was  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  in  love  with  Stella.  The  feudal  wor- 
ship of  imaginary  womanhood  mingled  in  the  sonnet 
with  a  metaphysic  of  beauty  and  a  cult  of  virtue. 

There  is,  however,  a  difference  between  the  Eliza- 
bethan sonnets  and  their  continental  forerunners 
which  has  not  been  sufficiently  noticed  by  the  schol- 
ars. The  language  of  the  continental  sonneteers 
was  more  archaic  than  that  of  their  British  followers. 
In  old  Italian  and  old  French  sonnets  the  roses  are 
wired  upon  an  idiom  which  explains  the  pose  and 
foundation  of  the  whole  art.  Had  Shakespeare 
adopted  the  Italian  form  of  the  sonnet,  or  used  an 
archaic  or  mannered  vehicle,  as  Dante  does  in  his 
"Vita  Nuova"  or  Ronsard  in  his  Sequences,  the 

94 


THE  SONNETS 

difficulty  of  interpreting  his  Sonnets  would  vanish. 
We  should  accept  them  as  things  of  exotic  beauty, 
impersonal  and  symbolic,  which  derive  their  im- 
mortality from  the  intellect  and  make  appeal  to  the 
intellect.  But  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  are  written 
in  the  most  ruddy,  fluent,  spontaneous,  inspired  ver- 
nacular that  the  English  language  can  show.  Their 
frequent  anticlimaxes,  their  constant  carelessness, 
their  monotonies,  their  absurdities,  are  sustained  and 
floated  on  a  lyrical  genius  of  the  first  order.  There 
is  no  poetry  in  the  world  quite  like  them.  Shake- 
speare thus  turned  the  sonnet  into  something  it  had 
never  been  before ;  for  its  ideas  and  conceits  remain 
absolutely  impersonal  and  supersensuous,  while  its 
language  has  become  warm,  rippling,  and  offhand. 
It  is  wonderful  that  the  single  bit  of  Elizabethan 
gossip  that  has  come  down  to  us  should  give  us  what 
we  most  want  to  know  about  Shakespeare's  Sonnets, 
namely,  "how  they  struck  a  contemporary."  In 
1598  Francis  Meres,  in  reviewing  current  poetry, 
wrote  that  "  the  sweet  and  witty  soul  of  Ovid  lives 
in  mellifluous  and  honey-tongued  Shakespeare, 
witness  his  'Venus  and  Adonis,'  his  'Lucrece'  and 
his  sugred  sonnets  among  his  private  friends." 
Sugar'd  sonnets  among  his  private  friends  !  I  doubt 
whether  anything  has  ever  been  said  about  Shake- 
speare's Sonnets  that  explains  them  better  than  these 
six  words.  Open  them  anywhere,  and  lines  or  phrases 
of  such  rapturous  felicity  greet  us  that  we  seem  to 
hear  the  wren. 

Mark  how  one  string,  sweet  husband  to  another, 
Strikes  each  in  each  by  mutual  ordering; 
Resembling  sire  and  child  and  happy  mother, 

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A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

Who  all  in  one,  one  pleasing  note  do  sing. 

•  •••••  • 

When  forty  summers  shall  besiege  thy  brow. 

Shall  I  compare  thee  to  a  summer's  day  ? 

When  to  the  sessions  of  sweet  silent  thought,  .  .  . 

The  Sonnets  should  be  dipped  into,  or  read  by  the 
half-hour  together,  singly  or  in  sequences,  and 
without  any  special  effort  to  understand  them ;  for 
they  have  been  written  in  a  mood  of  quietude  and 
relaxation,  perhaps  the  gentlest  mood  that  the 
gentlest  poet  ever  knew. 

In  reading  them  to-day,  we  are  under  certain  dis- 
abilities due  to  our  own  age.  During  the  Renais- 
sance the  passion  for  beauty  and  for  the  looks  of 
things  led  men  to  rediscover  the  fact  that  very  great 
beauty  merges  into  something  that  is  a  symbol,  a 
divine  thing,  intellectual,  and,  as  it  were,  super- 
human. The  chairs  and  tables  and  portraits  and 
palaces  of  the  Renaissance  have  this  splendor  for 
the  eye.  The  Italian  and  French  literatures  of  the 
period  are  steeped  in  a  passion  for  objects,  for 
statues,  processions,  pictures,  personal  beauty. 
This  passion  invaded  England  and  attacked  the 
poets.  Spenser  was  its  most  eminent  victim,  but 
Shakespeare  by  no  means  escaped.  His  "Venus  and 
Adonis"  and  his  "Lucrece"  are  plastic,  beauty- 
maddened,  Italianate  performances  —  pagan  if  you 
like,  and  a  part  of  that  pagan  period  which  produced 
the  supreme  animal  perfection  and  godlike  unmoral- 
ity  of  Titian's  portraits.  Sheer  beauty  was  felt  as  a 
power,  a  dynamo,  an  intoxicating  influence. 

96 


THE  SONNETS 

The  symbolic,  impersonal  quality  of  all  the  Cinque- 
cento  work  is  the  inimitable  part  of  it.  Modern 
painters  and  poets  are  forever  expressing  their  inti- 
mate personal  feelings ;  and  we  have  had  during  the 
last  century  such  a  downpour  of  the  personal  in  the 
work  of  Byron,  Wordsworth,  and  Keats ;  of  Tenny- 
son, Browning,  Mrs.  Browning,  Musset,  Heine,  and 
the  rest,  that  our  very  conception  of  a  poet  is  of  a 
man  who  writes  a  private  journal  in  verse,  who  hugs 
himself  and  sings.  He  uses  ideas  and  abstractions 
merely  as  a  means  of  expressing  his  private  feelings 
and  personal  experiences.  But  the  Cinquecento 
school  made  use  of  its  private  feelings  and  personal 
experiences  to  express  abstract  ideas.  You  will  say 
that  the  matter  is  of  small  importance,  so  long  as 
something  beautiful  is  produced  in  either  case.  But 
the  matter  is  important  from  the  point  of  view  of 
autobiography.  For  instance  :  if  you  credit  Tenny- 
son with  having  felt  toward  a  particular  man  the 
sentiments  which  he  expresses  in  "In  Memoriam" 
for  Arthur  Hallam,  you  do  right.  But  if  you  credit 
Shakespeare  with  truly  feeling  toward  a  particular 
man  the  sentiments  which  he  expresses  in  the  Son- 
nets for  his  patron,  you  do  wrong, 

Tennyson  is  undoubtedly  laying  open  his  private 
feelings ;  for  such  is  the  poet's  ideal  in  Tennyson's 
age.  Shakespeare  is  expressing  a  mood  which  he 
understands,  has  felt,  when  or  how  we  know  not  — ■ 
perhaps  only  in  that  heaven  of  invention  where  he 
found  Romeo,  Imogen,  and  King  Lear.  The  Shake- 
speare of  the  Sonnets  is  merely  one  of  Shakespeare's 
characters,  and  he  sprang  out  of  the  book  and  vol- 
ume of  Shakespeare's  brain,  —  out  of  all  the  trivial, 

97 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

fond  records  that  youth  and  observation  copied  there, 
—  even  as  Romeo,  Imogen,  or  King  Lear  sprang 
from  the  same  source.  And  this  personage  of  the 
Sonnets  disappeared  — just  as  Romeo,  Imogen,  and 
King  Lear  disappeared  —  with  the  occasion  that 
gave  each  of  them  birth.  Just  what  the  circum- 
stances were  that  gave  rise  to  the  Sonnets  we  do  not 
know ;  but  even  if  we  knew  all  their  details,  we  should 
still  have  to  understand  them  by  a  light  which  we  are 
apt  to  forget  —  the  light  of  The  Sonnet. 

Shakespeare's  Sonnets  were  almost  certainly  paid 
for  by  his  patron,  and  were  certainly  handed  about 
freely  among  the  wits  of  the  time.  To  our  taste  it 
seems  absurd  that  Shakespeare  should  have  written 
seventeen  sonnets  to  a  young  nobleman,  beseeching 
the  lad  to  beget  children  in  order  that  his  beauty 
might  be  transmitted  to  posterity.  But  we  must  re- 
member that  the  exchange  of  absurd  sonnets  was  a 
social  game,  lately  introduced  from  France,  which 
everyone  was  playing  when  Shakespeare  wrote.  I 
can  go  as  far  as  believing  that  the  pampered  boy  was 
handsome,  and  perhaps  resembled  a  portrait  of 
Adonis  by  Giorgione ;  but  I  cannot  believe  that 
Shakespeare  was  sincerely  anxious  about  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  human  species  by  this  youth.  If  it 
were  the  case  of  Tennyson,  I  should  believe  every 
word  the  poet  said.  I  should  be  surprised,  of 
course,  that  any  man  should  have  strong  feelings 
about  such  a  matter;  but  I  should  accept  Tenny- 
son's word  for  it.  In  the  case  of  Shakespeare,  how- 
ever, I  feel  that  what  the  sociologists  call  the  "play- 
instinct"  is  involved.    To  speak  brutally,  it  is  a  joke. 

The  first  seventeen  Sonnets,  when  viewed  in  this 

98 


THE  SONNETS 

light,  thus  explain  their  artificiaHty  as  perfectly  as 
if  Shakespeare  had  written  them  in  an  archaic  lan- 
guage. The  extraordinary  beauty  of  certain  lines  in 
them  fails  to  raise  in  our  minds  any  problems  as  to 
Shakespeare's  biography :  we  accept  the  lines  as 
poetry.  And  indeed  the  Twelfth  Sonnet  is  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  that  Shakespeare  ever  wrote  :  — 

When  I  do  count  the  clock  that  tells  the  time, 
And  see  the  brave  day  sunk  in  hideous  night; 
When  I  behold  the  violet  past  prime, 
And  sable  curls  all  silver'd  o'er  with  white; 
When  lofty  trees  I  see  barren  of  leaves. 
Which  erst  from  heat  did  canopy  the  herd, 
And  summer's  green  all  girded  up  in  sheaves, 
Borne  on  the  bier  with  white  and  bristly  beard; 
Then  of  thy  beauty  do  I  question  make. 
That  thou  among  the  wastes  of  time  must  go, 
Since  sweets  and  beauties  do  themselves  forsake. 
And  die  as  fast  as  they  see  others  grow; 

And  nothing  'gainst  Time's  scythe  can  make  defence 
Save  breed,  to  brave  him  when  he  takes  thee  hence. 

Now  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  Shakespeare, 
having  discovered  a  new  talent  in  himself  in  writing 
the  first  seventeen  Sonnets,  proceeded  to  write  many 
more  in  the  same  manner.  The  order  in  which  they 
are  printed  is  not  quite  authoritative,  for  they  are 
supposed  to  have  been  published  piratically  by  the 
booksellers.  The  general  theme  of  them  is  the  cele- 
bration of  ideal  love  —  precisely  the  theme  of  Dante 
and  of  Petrarch.  The  mood  they  depict  is  not  the 
mood  of  one  who  is  in  love,  but  the  mood  of  one  who 
knows  what  love  is.  There  is  a  monotony  about  the 
theme,  as  Shakespeare  himself  several  times  points 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

out;  yet  he  manages  to  draw  music  out  of  the  repe- 
titions. 

I  confess  that,  if  these  Sonnets  were  all  that  had 
been  left  by  an  unknown  poet  of  Elizabeth's  age,  I 
might  have  been  deceived  into  regarding  them  in  the 
modern  light  as  confessions.  I  might  have  asked  the 
question  put  by  Richard  Grant  White:  "Would 
Shakespeare,  or  the  man  for  whom  he  wrote,  have 
shown  about  among  his  friends  these  evidences  of  so 
profound  an  emotion,  these  witnesses  of  an  intellec- 
tual struggle  that  went  near  to  shatter  his  whole 
being  ? "  But  when  I  think  of  the  pictures  of  passion 
/«  women  that  Shakespeare  has  left  us,  of  Juliet,  of 
Venus,  of  Rosalind,  of  Cleopatra,  —  pictures  which 
certainly  do  not  represent  personal  episodes  and 
which  owe  their  power  to  the  fact  that  they  are  purely 
imaginative,  —  I  cannot  help  classing  the  Sonnets  in 
the  same  list.  Such  poetry  as  is  in  Shakespeare's 
Sonnets  is  not  the  record  of  any  particular  passion  :  — 

The  poet's  eye,  in  a  fine  frenzy  rolling, 

Doth  glance  from  heaven  to  earth,  from  earth  to  heaven ; 

And,  as  imagination  bodies  forth 

The  forms  of  things  unknown,  the  poet's  pen 

Turns  them  to  shapes,  and  gives  to  airy  nothing 

A  local  habitation,  and  a  name. 

Such  tricks  hath  strong  imagination. 

That,  if  it  would  but  apprehend  some  joy. 

It  comprehends  some  bringer  of  that  joy. 

The  biographical  value  of  the  Sonnets  is  that  they 
show  how  slight  was  the  occasion  out  of  which 
Shakespeare,  through  his  passion  for  abstractions, 
was  able  to  draw  those  pictures  of  love-in-absence, 
lovers'  quarrels,  love  at  unequal  ages,  love's  forgive- 

100 


THE  SONNETS 

nesses,  love's  happiness,  which  have  been  the  com- 
fort of  lovers  of  both  sexes  ever  since. 

Let  us  turn  over  the  pages  of  the  Sonnets  and  ob- 
serve that,  whenever  one  of  them  is  so  whimsical  or 
so  defective  that  it  keeps  us  alive  to  the  playful  or 
half-playful  nature  of  the  whole  series,  we  do  not  tor- 
ment ourselves  with  biographical  interpretations  of  it. 
We  cannot,  for  instance,  believe  that  Shakespeare 
lay  awake  at  night,  or  at  least  for  rnany  nights,  think- 
ing about  the  beloved  youth ;  or  that  he  felt  himself 
to  be  in  hell  when  separated  from  the  young  swell. 
We  cannot  believe  that  Sonnet  Number  42,  in  which 
the  poet  forgives  the  idol  for  having  seduced  his  own 
mistress,  represents  a  soulful  revelation ;  or  that  the 
very  beautiful   Sonnet  Number  95,  in    which    the 
poet  forgives  the  idol  for  being  a  thoroughly  bad  lot, 
is  the  utterance  of  personal  passion.     Both  numbers 
42  and  95  belong  to  a  whole  class  of  gentle,  passion- 
less,  deprecatory   sonnets,   written    on    the   theme, 
"Upon  thy  side  against  myself  I'll   fight."     This 
idea  is  a  philosophic  abstraction  of  the  first  water, 
and  could  have  been  arrived  at  only  by  a  mind  which 
had  passed  through  passion  and  was  living  in  the 
beyond.     Each  of  these  gentle  sonnets  is  a  toy  of 
the  brain  made  to  express  the  abstraction.     But  it  is 
a  toy  like  the  mariner's  needle,  with  which  the  whole 
of  earth  and  all  the  heavens  are  in  conspiracy.     A 
current  of  gigantic  power  is  running  through  these 
toys.     Shakespeare  himself,  though  he  knows  they 
are  toys,  does  not  know  they  are  powerful.     He 
thinks  he  is  merely  giving  to  airy  nothings  a  local 
habitation  and  a  name.     But,  for  my  part,  I  have 
seen  so  many  good  minds  destroyed  by  opposing  the 

101 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

current  in  these  sonnets  that  I  shall  use  a  pointer, 
move  rapidly,  and  attempt  no  cataloguing  or  digest 
of  their  meanings.  I  shall  content  myself  with 
throwing  out  a  guess  or  two  in  the  direction  of  their 
general  nature. 

I  will  first  quote  one  in  which  the  thought  is  so 
quizzically  expressed  that  we  perceive  it  to  be  sheer 
thought;  and  yet  it  is  so  true  a  picture  of  what  hap- 
pens in  the  mind  of  anyone  who  is  in  love,  that 
one  can  see  how  passion  flashes  out  of  it  for  the 
lover. 

43 
When  most  I  wink,  then  do  mine  eyes  best  see. 
For  all  the  day  they  view  things  unrespected ; 
But  when  I  sleep,  in  dreams  they  look  on  thee. 
And,  darkly  bright,  are  bright  in  dark  directed. 
Then  thou,  whose  shadow  shadows  doth  make  bright, 
How  would  thy  shadow's  form  form  happy  show 
To  the  clear  day  with  thy  much  clearer  light. 
When  to  unseeing  eyes  thy  shade  shines  so ! 
How  would,  I  say,  mine  eyes  be  blessed  made 
By  looking  on  thee  in  the  living  day, 
When  in  dead  night  thy  fair  imperfect  shade 
Through  heavy  sleep  on  sightless  eyes  doth  stay  ? 
All  days  are  nights  to  see  till  I  see  thee. 
And  nights  bright  days  when  dreams  do  show  thee  me. 

So  also  Number  31  shows  the  consecration  that 
love  —  I  mean  being-in-love  —  casts  upon  all  our 
previous  emotions.  This  Sonnet  would  perhaps 
mean  little  to  one  who  had  not  been  in  love  —  yet  it 
catches  and  expresses  one  of  the  subtlest  of  life's 
experiences. 

102 


THE  SONNETS 

Thy  bosom  is  endeared  with  all  hearts, 
Which  I  by  lacking  have  supposed  dead; 
And  there  reigns  love,  and  all  love's  loving  parts, 
And  all  those  friends  which  I  thought  buried. 
How  many  a  holy  and  obsequious  tear 
Hath  dear  religious  love  stol'n  from  mine  eye, 
As  interest  of  the  dead,  which  now  appear 
But  things  remov'd,  that  hidden  in  thee  lie ! 
Thou  art  the  grave  where  buried  love  doth  live, 
Hung  with  the  trophies  of  my  lovers  gone. 
Who  all  their  parts  of  me  to  thee  did  give : 
That  due  of  many  now  is  thine  alone  : 
Their  images  I  lov'd  I  view  in  thee. 
And  thou,  ail  they,  hast  all  the  all  of  me. 

Of  the  same  import  is  Number  53,  which  I  quote 
because  of  its  affectation  and  carelessness.  It  is  a 
queer  sonnet,  it  is  cruelly  artificial;  but  the  idea  it 
contains  is  as  profound  as  Plato,  and  more  truly  ex- 
pressed by  Shakespeare  than  by  Plato;  for  Shake- 
speare does  not  dogmatize,  but  leaves  the  thought  in 
the  vague  where  it  belongs. 

S3 
What  is  your  substance,  whereof  are  you  made, 
That  millions  of  strange  shadows  on  you  tend  ? 
Since  every  one  hath,  every  one,  one  shade, 
And  you,  but  one,  can  every  shadow  lend. 
Describe  Adonis,  and  the  counterfeit 
Is  poorly  imitated  after  you ; 
On  Helen's  cheek  all  art  of  beauty  set, 
And  you  in  Grecian  tires  are  painted  new : 
Speak  of  the  spring  and  foison  of  the  year, 
The  one  doth  shadow  of  your  beauty  show, 
The  other  as  your  bounty  doth  appear; 

103 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

And  you  in  every  blessed  shape  we  know. 

In  all  external  grace  you  have  some  part, 

But  you  like  none,  none  you,  for  constant  heart. 

The  Sonnet  last  quoted  gives  the  heart  and  kernel 
of  an  idea  that  Plato  elaborated  somewhat  ponder- 
ously in  his  "  Symposium."  I  will  confess  en  passant 
that  some  of  the  Sonnets  are  incomprehensible,  be- 
cause the  thought  has  become  too  attenuated  — 
for  example.  Numbers  67  and  68 ;  and  that  one  or 
two  of  them  are  disgusting  —  for  example.  Number 
118.  But  all  are  baubles,  and  this  symbolic  quahty 
is  the  only  quahty  they  all  have  in  common. 

In  those  that  1  have  quoted  thus  far  the  element  of 
paradox  and  jeu  d' esprit  is  apparent ;  but  when  you 
come  to  the  very  great  sonnets,  where  the  poetic 
part  is  perfectly  expressed  and  the  idea  is  obvious, 
and  represents  a  universal  experience,  it  is  almost 
impossible,  while  reading  one  of  them,  to  keep  one's 
head.  We  could  almost  swear  that  the  poet  is  in 
love.     Let  the  reader  glance  through  Number  98. 

98 
From  you  I  have  been  absent  in  the  spring. 
When  proud-pied  April,  dress'd  in  all  his  trim, 
Hath  put  a  spirit  of  youth  in  everything,^ 
That  heavy  Saturn  laugh'd  and  leap'd  with  him. 
Yet  nor  the  lays  of  birds,  nor  the  sweet  smell 
Of  different  flowers  in  odour  and  in  hue. 
Could  make  me  any  summer's  story  tell, 
Or  from  their  proud  lap  pluck  them  where  they  grew; 
Nor  did  I  wonder  at  the  lily's  white, 
Nor  praise  the  deep  vermilion  in  the  rose; 
They  were  but  sweet,  but  figures  of  delight, 
Drawn  after  you,  you  pattern  of  all  those. 

104 


THE  SONNETS 

Yet  seem'd  it  winter  still,  and,  you  away, 
As  with  your  shadow  I  with  these  did  play. 

76 

Why  is  my  verse  so  barren  of  new  pride, 

So  far  from  variation  or  quick  change  ? 

Why  with  the  time  do  I  not  glance  aside 

To  new-found  methods  and  to  compounds  strange  ? 

Why  write  I  still  all  one,  ever  the  same. 

And  keep  invention  in  a  noted  weed, 

That  every  word  doth  almost  tell  my  name. 

Showing  their  birth  and  where  they  did  proceed  ? 

O,  know,  sweet  love,  I  always  write  of  you, 

And  you  and  love  are  still  my  argument; 

So,  all  my  best  is  dressing  old  words  new, 

Spending  again  what  is  already  spent: 
For  as  the  sun  is  daily  new  and  old, 
So  is  my  love  still  telling  what  is  told. 

So  am  I  as  the  rich,  whose  blessed  key 
Can  bring  him  to  his  sweet  up-locked  treasure, 
The  which  he  will  not  every  hour  survey. 
For  blunting  the  fine  point  of  seldom  pleasure. 
Therefore  are  feasts  so  solemn  and  so  rare, 
Since  seldom  coming,  in  the  long  year  set. 
Like  stones  of  worth,  they  thinly  placed  are, 
Or  captain  jewels  in  the  carcanet. 
So  is  the  time  that  keeps  you  as  my  chest, 
Or  as  the  wardrobe  which  the  robe  doth  hide. 
To  make  some  special  instant  special-blest 
By  new  unfolding  his  imprison'd  pride. 

Blessed  are  you,  whose  worthiness  gives  scope, 
Being  had,  to  triumph,  being  lack'd,  to  hope. 

I  have  chosen  these  favorites  almost  at  random ; 
and  the  point  I  would  make  —  also  a  paradox  —  is 

105 


A  GLANCE  TOWARD  SHAKESPEARE 

that  it  is  because  Shakespeare's  best  sonnets  are 
completely  intellectual  and  dispassionate,  that  they 
make  so  personal  an  appeal.  They  are,  after  all,  no 
more  convincing  than  "Hamlet."  Our  own  most 
inner  chords  can  be  made  to  vibrate,  whether 
through  music,  architecture,  or  poetry,  only  by 
forces  which  have  passed  through  some  prism  or 
crystal  of  the  mind,  and  which  are  as  impersonal 
as  geometry. 

The  fact  that  these  Sonnets  were  addressed  to  a 
young  man  has  distressed  the  critics  of  the  after- 
world;  though  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the  masses 
of  mankind  have  always  accepted  them  simply,  each 
reader  taking  his  share  of  them  as  poetry.  There 
exists,  of  course,  such  a  thing  as  love  between  per- 
sons of  the  same  sex.  This  kind  of  love  is  often  true 
and  noble,  and  contains  an  element  of  passion.  It 
has  been  hymned  by  Milton  in  his  "Lycidas,"  by 
Keats  in  his  "Adonais"  and  by  Tennyson  in  his  "In 
Memoriam."  This  sort  of  love  is  apt  to  run  into 
extravagances  and  vices,  and  is  a  troublesome  kind 
of  passion.  An  attachment  of  this  sort  may  pos- 
sibly have  had  some  share  in  the  creation  of  Shake- 
speare's Sonnets.  I  do  not  see  it  there  myself.  I 
see  only  reminiscences  of  ordinary  love  evoked  by 
fancy,  expressed  in  terms  of  passing  fashion,  and 
controlled  by  the  mind  of  the  greatest  poet  that  ever 
lived. 

If  Shakespeare  had  given  us  in  his  Sonnets  pic- 
tures of  lust  and  debauchery,  I  should  still  not  re- 
gard them  as  throwing  much  light  on  his  personal 
history,  for  they  would  have  been  as  ideal  as  his 
Tarquin.    He  eludes  us  in  the  Sonnets  as  completely 

106 


THE  SONNETS 

as  in  the  plays,  and  for  the  same  reason :  his  mind 
had  the  power  of  grasping  abstractions  that  are 
larger  than  we  can  compass.  We  are  led  to  suspect 
that  a  brain  such  as  his  could  not  evolve  the  personal ; 
he  translated  it  into  an  abstraction  as  soon  as  he 
saw  it.  In  the  process  of  expressing  a  private  opin- 
ion, he  turned  it  into  a  generality,  and  this  habit 
became  so  inveterate  with  him,  and  he  became  so 
alarmingly  clever,  so  completely  absorbed  in  the 
explosions  of  his  thought  at  each  moment,  that  we 
are  shaken  and  surprised,  as  perhaps  he  was ;  but  it 
is  only  the  universal  in  ourselves  which  is  touched. 
It  is  the  impersonal,  the  divine,  that  we  get  from  him, 
whether  in  play  or  sonnet.  We  find  our  own  intimate 
thoughts  in  him,  and  exclaim,  as  Stephano  did  when 
he  heaid  the  music  of  the  invisible  Ariel,  "This  is  the 
tune  of  our  catch  played  by  the  picture  of  nobody." 


APPENDIX  I 

NOTE  ON  ENUNCIATION 

In  all  great  art  there  seems  to  be  a  lightness  of  touch,  a 
transparency,  a  fluidity  attained  without  loss  of  weight  — 
as  if  a  thing  could  be  at  the  same  time  both  a  mountain  and 
a  mirage.  This  supersubtlety  of  the  vehicle  itself  daunts 
the  beholder,  or  overcomes  him  like  a  summer  cloud.  We 
do  not  know  how  the  thing  is  done,  or  on  what  it  depends. 
When  we  read  poetry  to  ourselves,  there  is  nothing  between 
our  minds  and  the  mind  of  the  poet ;  the  vehicle  is  purely 
intellectual;  the  ideas  of  the  poet  pass  from  his  mind  to 
ours  in  silence.  But  when  poetry  is  read  aloud,  recited, 
or  acted  on  a  stage,  new  arts  come  into  existence,  the  arts 
of  speech  and  gesture,  and  the  like,  and  the  new  arts  must 
partake  of  all  the  power  and  all  the  subtlety  of  the  verse 
behind  them. 

Though  it  is  impossible  to  decide  how  much  of  charm  a 
good  delivery  can  lend  to  verse,  it  is  plain  that  a  bad  de- 
livery will  destroy  any  poetry  whatever.  In  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare  almost  every  idea  is  syllabled  by  someone  on 
the  stage.  Stage  directions  are  rare.  If  there  is  a  knock- 
ing, the  porter  says,  "Knock,  knock,  knock";  a  modern 
playwright  would  have  relied  on  a  stage  direction.  But  on 
Shakespeare's  stage  every  character  is,  like  Prospero,  sur- 
rounded by  Ariels,  to  whom  he  talks  in  asides.  They  all 
soliloquize.  Soliloquy,  the  bugbear  of  modern  dramatists, 
is  Shakespeare's  main  reliance. 

When  an  actor  who  has  been  trained  in  the  modern 
drama  plays  Shakespeare,  he  is  apt  to  make  either  too 
much  or  too  little  of  his  lines.  The  school  he  has  learned 
in  is  a  school  of  crude  simplicity,  of  long  pauses  and 
dynamic  effects,  of  melodrama  rubbed  in  by  heavy  psy- 

108 


APPENDIX 

chology.  The  flashes  and  cadenzas  of  Shakespeare,  his 
leaps  into  the  beyond  and  sudden  turns  of  humor  and 
extravagance,  outrun  the  modern  stage.  Your  actor,  per- 
haps, tries  to  dramatize  his  lines  and  relate  them  to  his 
conception  of  the  part.  Alas !  he  must  first  have  a  con- 
ception of  the  poet  himself.  The  nimble-footed  naturalism 
of  Shakespeare  demands  a  Proteus  who  can  turn  at  will 
into  air,  fire,  or  water,  into  Puck,  Mercutio,  or  Malvolio. 

A  Shakespearean  play  is  a  headlong  race  of  wit,  pathos, 
and  expressiveness.  The  actors  must  vibrate  like  musical 
instruments,  and  shake  off  a  thousand  fancies  with  facility, 
while  their  major  passions  are  rumbling  underneath  and 
uncoiling  at  the  proper  time. 

In  the  acting  of  poetic  drama  every  effect  is  connected 
with  enunciation  —  with  the  lips,  teeth,  tongue,  voice,  and 
intonation  of  the  actor.  This  part  of  his  performance 
must  be  absolutely  perfect,  and  with  a  perfection  that 
merges  into  the  action  and  beauty  of  the  rest  and  becomes 
lost  in  the  thoughts  behind  his  words.  The  speech  of  an 
actor,  his  whispers  or  his  roars,  must  be  modulated  and 
edged  with  a  delivery  as  delicate  as  the  sting  of  the  bee; 
for  this  enunciation,  even  when  it  seems  to  be  lost  on  the 
ear,  qualifies  his  whole  rendering  and  gives  it  a  refinement 
which  nothing  else  can  give.  The  following  is  Dr.  Doran's 
account  of  Edmund  Kean  as  Sir  Giles  Overreach,  the  miser, 
money-lender,  and  extortioner  in  Massinger's  play,  "A 
New  Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts."  I  cite  the  passage  as  a 
tribute  to  the  power  of  elocution. 

"In  this  last  character,  all  the  qualities  of  Kean's  voice 
came  out  to  wonderful  purpose,  especially  in  the  scene 
where  Lovel  asks  him,  — 

Are  you  not  moved  with  the  sad  imprecations 
And  curses  of  whole  families,  made  wretched 
By  your  sinister  practices  ?  — 

to  which  Sir  Giles  replies :  — 


APPENDIX 

Yes,  as  rocks  are 
When  foamy  billows  split  themselves  against 
Their  flinty  ribs ;  or  as  the  moon  is  moved 
When  wolves,  with  hunger  pined,  howl  at  her  brightness. 

"I  seem  still  to  hear  the  vv^ords  and  the  voice  [of  Edmund 
Kean]  as  I  pen  this  passage ;  now^  composed,  now^  grand  as 
the  foaming  billows;  so  flute-like  on  the  word  'moon,' 
creating  a  scene  with  the  sound;  and  anon  sharp,  harsh, 
fierce  in  the  last  line,  with  a  look  upward  from  those 
matchless  eyes,  that  rendered  the  troop  visible,  and  their 
howl  perceptible  to  the  ear;  the  whole  serenity  of  the  man, 
and  the  solidity  of  his  temper,  being  illustrated  less  by  the 
assurance  in  the  succeeding  words  than  by  the  exquisite 
music  in  the  tone  with  which  he  uttered  the  word 'bright- 
ness.'" 

Perfection  of  utterance  is  the  basis  of  acting.  It  is  an 
artificial  accomplishment,  attained  by  study  and  de- 
veloped by  practice.  We  enjoy  good  recitation  when  we 
hear  it,  but  we  have  forgotten  that  it  is  an  art.  In  the 
matter  of  painting  or  music,  we  quite  concede  that  any 
good  work  —  anything  that  counts  as  art  —  is  the  result 
of  accurate  knowledge.  We  know  that  the  orient  which 
shines  about  any  finished  production  is  the  outcome  of 
lifelong  study  and  of  a  grind  over  detail.  The  grind  has 
been  continued  for  years,  and  about  it  there  has  hung 
little  suggestion  of  clouds  or  of  beauty,  but  rather  the  dust 
and  chips  of  a  workshop. 

In  the  matter  of  singing,  the  professionals  have  educated 
our  public.  No  one  thinks  that  good  singing  is  a  gift  of 
the  gods,  or  that  a  child  will  sing  well  by  nature.  But  in 
the  matter  of  speech  the  American  Educator  of  to-day  is 
prone  to  set  the  little  darlings  on  the  stage  and  let  nature 
be  their  teacher.  Their  beautiful  souls  will  instruct  them. 
Let  them  make  their  exits  and  entrances;  let  them  recite 
their  lines,  and  do  their  business  according  to  the  impulse 
of  their  pure  little  hearts;  and  we  shall,  no  doubt,  have 

110 


APPENDIX 

such  acting  as  can  never  be  attained  by  instruction.  The 
results  of  this  sentimentalism  are  seen  in  our  children's 
performances.  Behind  the  sentimentalism,  nevertheless, 
and  obscured  by  it,  there  lies  a  truth,  which  the  musical 
world  knows  well,  and  which  the  theatrical  world  will  dis- 
cover as  soon  as  it  takes  up  the  ci airing  of  children  seri- 
ously. The  performance  of  a  talented  child  who  has 
received  a  thorough  grounding  in  technique  has  in  it  a 
divine  element,  a  grace  of  its  own,  an  impersonal,  seraphic 
charm,  which  one  cannot  expect  from  the  grown-up  artist, 
and  which  is  one  of  the  aesthetic  mysteries  of  the  world. 
In  the  matter  of  acting,  child-talent  is  common  —  it  is  very 
common :  it  is  much  the  commonest  of  all  artistic  talents 
—  but  it  is  as  helpless  before  a  play  as  a  musical  child 
would  be  if  confronted  with  a  church  organ.  The  child's 
hands  must  be  placed  on  the  keys  and  its  mind  adjusted 
to  the  music.     It  must  be  taught. 

If  you  will  take  the  pains  to  train  a  set  of  children  aver- 
aging, say,  eight  years  old,  to  play  the  "Tempest,"  or  some 
smaller  play,  which  is  expressed  in  language  far  above  their 
comprehension  but  which  deals  with  ideas  that  are  en- 
tirely within  it,  you  will  find  that  the  children  at  first  have 
to  be  taught  every  speech  and  gesture.  They  do  not  know 
what  the  whole  thing  is  about.  They  recite  like  little 
monkeys,  and  take  each  speech  by  itself.  The  words  and 
gestures  which  they  learn  teach  them  the  idea  —  in  scraps 
and  at  moments.  They  do  the  work  before  they  understand 
the  doctrine.  As  the  day  of  dress-rehearsal  approaches, 
however,  the  children  begin  to  see  the  life  of  the  story 
behind  its  separate  scenes;  and  note  this:  it  is  the  story 
that  they  see,  rather  than  their  own  several  parts  in  it. 
They  have  not  an  isolated  "conception"  of  their  own 
roles,  but  a  general  conception  of  the  whole  plot  and  its 
progress,  and  of  their  cues  as  part  of  the  story. 

To  endeavor  to  give  a  child  a  conception  of  his  part  is  to 
confuse  him.     Let  him  act  the  part,  and  his  conception  will 

111 


APPENDIX 

be  the  outcome  —  not  a  thought,  but  a  dramatic  exhibi- 
tion. As  a  rule,  this  understanding  of  what  the  whole 
play  is  about  falls  like  a  climax  upon  a  company  of  chil- 
dren after  a  month  of  hard  work;  and  they  do  wonders. 

The  special  beauty  and  pathos  of  children's  work  is  due 
to  two  elements :  the  ingenuousness  of  their  natures  and 
the  finish  of  their  performance. 

The  moment  the  detail  becomes  slovenly,  the  charm 
vanishes.  This  is  so  apt  to  occur  in  children's  plays  that 
perhaps  one  should  regard  it  as  a  normal  feature  of  them. 
When  the  children  have  once  made  a  success,  and  feel  self- 
confident,  they  are  apt  to  get  excited,  to  forget  their  careful 
diction,  and  carry  all  before  them  with  enthusiasm  and 
fine  acting. 

On  the  instant  that  they  do  this,  the  beauty  drops  out 
of  the  show,  and  the  educator  must  recur  to  first  principles 
and  give  the  urchins  further  drill  in  accurate  speech  and 
formal  stage  behavior. 

I  take  it  that  grown-up  actors  might  learn  something 
useful  to  themselves  by  observing  how  children  best  attain 
a  true  relation  to  their  roles :  it  is  by  never  thinking  of  the 
role  as  a  separate  problem.  The  "conception"  of  a  part, 
the  conception  of  a  part !  I  will  not  say  that  a  Shake- 
spearean actor  who  is  drenched  in  the  whole  atmosphere  of 
the  plays  can  do  himself  much  harm  by  working  up  a  con- 
ception of  Othello  or  Romeo.  The  elder  school  of  actors 
got  their  training  as  children  do,  and  were  master-crafts- 
men in  recitation  and  in  stage  behavior  before  they  were 
old  enough  to  lay  claim  to  an  important  role.  But  a  young 
actor,  or  a  new  Shakespearean,  had  better  never  think  of 
his  role  as  a  separate  thing,  but  follow  the  thought  of  the 
author  and  of  the  audience,  which  is  always  fixed  on  the 
thread  of  the  story. 

I  doubt  very  much  whether  Shakespeare  himself  had  any 
"  conception  "  of  his  separate  characters.  And  why  should 
one  go  to  building  up  a  set  of  phantasmal  conceptions,  and 

112 


APPENDIX 

then  letting  them  loose  in  a  situation  which  is  already  com- 
plex enough  without  them  ?  We  see  these  so-called  con- 
ceptions battling  and  cutting  each  others  throats  in 
amateur  theatricals,  where  there  is  often  room  for  nothing 
else  but  them  upon  the  stage.  It  is  hard  work  and  self- 
effacement  that  counts  in  the  end. 


APPENDIX  II 

AMERICAN  SPEECH 

In  America,  education  occupies  the  attention  of  every- 
one; and  this  is  one  of  the  most  hopeful  things  that  can  be 
said  about  our  outlook.  We  are  beginning  to  wonder  what 
education  is,  and  what  part  of  it  is  connected  with  school- 
books. 

There  has,  within  the  last  generation,  grown  up  a  scat- 
tered class  of  enthusiasts  who  are  interested  in  speech.  It 
was  revealed  to  them,  perhaps  by  some  deep  semi-religious 
instinct,  —  one  of  those  impulses  by  which  Nature  saves 
herself,  —  that  a  person  who  could  articulate  was  a  civilized 
being.  They  discovered,  as  it  were  by  a  miracle,  that  the 
brain,  the  heart,  the  attention,  the  muscular  system,  the 
soul  and  body,  were  drawn  to  a  focus  in  the  act  of  speech, 
and  that  education  began  here. 

Perhaps,  also,  the  danger  that  threatened  our  language 
through  the  influx  of  foreigners,  and  which  was  reflected 
in  the  speech  of  our  own  children  and  of  their  intimates, 
frightened  these  new  prophets.  Perhaps  the  suspicion 
passed  through  their  minds  that,  unless  they  bestirred 
themselves,  they  would  soon  not  understand  the  lingo  that 
was  being  spoken  in  their  own  neighborhood. 

Certain  it  is  that  many  minds  among  us  have  been 
awakened  to  the  importance  of  articulate  speech.  This  is 
a  matter  that  has  never  been  neglected  in  Europe,  where 
people  have  always  taught  their  children  to  speak  care- 
fully, as  a  matter  of  course,  and  in  the  same  spirit  in  which 
they  put  a  spoon  in  the  hands  of  a  baby  who  is  old  enough 
to  feed  itself. 

But  the  effort  to  improve  our  speech  in  America  must 
be  self-conscious  and  dogmatic;  because  a  large  part  of 

114 


I 


APPENDIX 

our  population  believes  that  babies  will  find  spoons  for 
themselves,  and  that  good  speech  comes  by  nature,  and  is 
at  best  a  foolish  thing. 

The  problem  of  reforming  the  speech  of  America  would 
seem  ghastly  and  hopeless,  but  for  the  fact  that  such  a 
reform  is  mimetic  rather  than  rational.  Many  a  man  has 
reformed  his  own  speech  in  middle  life  through  contact 
with  someone  whose  voice  and  utterance  he  admired.  His 
ears  became  sharpened. 

As  for  the  young,  they  need  only  a  model  and  good-will 
to  show  a  change  for  the  better  in  a  week.  Give  a  shock 
to  a  certain  portion  of  their  consciousness,  and  they  become 
aware  of  their  own  deficiencies :  they  hear  their  own  hor- 
rors :  the  rest  is  easy.  There  will,  no  doubt,  be  many 
dogmas,  many  methods,  and  every  one  of  them  will  act  as 
a  stimulus  and  a  step  in  advance.  When  our  people  shall 
have  come  to  understand  the  importance  of  Articulate 
Speech,  the  first  province  of  Learning  will  have  been  con- 
quered. 

It  makes  little  difference  what  pronunciation  is  adopted, 
so  long  as  the  vocalization  is  good.  The  Scotch  utterance 
is  to  my  mind  beautiful,  and  reveals  the  remarkable  intel- 
lect of  that  people  as  clearly  as  anything  they  have  accom- 
plished. Should  America  develop  a  pronunciation  totally 
different  from  the  British  pronunciation,  there  would  be 
nothing  to  regret  so  long  as  it  was  good. 

But  if  you  slur  and  gargle  your  mother-tongue,  I  ques- 
tion whether  your  mother-wit  will  ever  do  much  for  litera- 
ture. The  voice  is  so  much  a  part  of  the  brain,  that  you 
can  hardly  think  clearly  and  yet  speak  in  gibberish  :  and  this 
is  the  great  and  wonderful  discovery  that  America  is  making. 

The  bearing  of  it  on  Shakespeare  is  obvious  enough;  for 
the  reading  of  him  comes  in  the  wake  of  seeing  him  acted, 
seeing  him  acted  in  the  wake  of  reading  him,  and  both 
come  as  the  strongest  stimulus  the  world  has  ever  known 
in  the  provinces  of  speech  and  of  thought. 

115 


APPENDIX 

A  Shakespearean  troupe  is  a  traveling  university,  with 
this  advantage  over  other  universities  that  it  reaches  the 
young.  It  inculcates  good  speech  by  example,  and  in  the 
very  moment  that  it  does  this,  it  points  to  the  place  where 
true  education  should  begin,  —  has  always  begun,  — 
namely,  with  the  study  of  the  great  poets. 


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